I like to think I’m a decently self-sufficient woman. I can take care of my finances, health and well-being, and entertain myself, thanks very much.

But when it comes to one thing, I’m hopelessly helpless. I may as well toss on a petticoat and swoon to high heaven.

I’m talking, of course, about bugs. Not the small ones, like millipedes, some roaches and silverfish (though they’re still gross); I mean the B-52 cockroaches and giant cane and daddy longlegs spiders that seem to fill the entire room if you find yourself trapped with one.

Yes, I know the difference between an insect and an arachnid. It doesn’t matter when it’s huge and ready to eat you.

I’ve always been semiterrified by large creepy-crawlies, spiders especially. They always seem to know where you are trying to go and follow in that very direction. The only escape is to dispatch it, preferably Ripley-style with a large flamethrower, but of course by that point I’m near tears.

When I attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, I encountered a whole new breed of evil. It was the worst of the insect and arachnid worlds combined.

All I knew at the time was that a devil bug was scurrying across my dorm bathroom. I had the wherewithal to cover it with a cup but had to call my Illinois friend to rescue me.

Want to know what it was? Google “house centipede” and don’t blame me for your nightmares.

Oddly, the centipedes we find in Hawaii are OK in my book. Without wings, they are easier to corner and toss outside. And without terrible, long, spiderlike legs, they strike less fear in my insect-averse heart.

Nowadays my fiance is my noble — and possibly slightly exasperated — bug savior. We both know where the Black Flag roach killer is, but he’s the only one who can get close enough to use it.

If the bug is in a place I need to be, like the bathroom, I cannot enter until my fiance has spritzed the intruder into submission. (My preference would be to saturate it and then set it on fire, but he’s more reasonable that way.) He shows no fear when the thing keeps moving even after being poisoned, but at that point I’m down the hall yelping to spray it some more.

I’m not hopeful I’ll ever get over my big-bug phobia. Just the thought of a huge, hairy cane spider staring at me with its beady little eyes as it contemplates how it can crawl up my leg is enough to give me the shivers.

I’m not buying the argument that “they are just as scared of you as you are of them.” I think bugs know exactly what they want, and it’s world domination. All they have to do is overwhelm enough scaredy-cats like me.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Celia Downes at cdownes@staradvertiser.com.