It started after a session with a newish client. The intersection of feeling needed by them and my sense I’ve failed them does it. Their story sucked me in and spit me out, and suddenly I wasn’t balanced or settled or strong. I’d fallen into an unliked version of myself—pulled out to sea in emotion, certain I’d done more harm than help.
The feeling didn’t leave when the session ended.
It followed me home. Sat with me at dinner. Slipped quietly into my relationship.
Dave is talking—filling me in on Evelyn’s schooling, a thought about the new chair set he put together. And I notice it: he didn’t ask about what I was saying.
It’s small. It should stay small.
But I don’t let it.
I take it as a slight. Then I do something subtle and reckless—I don’t throw it away. I don’t even question it. I put it in my pocket like a fragile baby bird and label it: concerning.
We have a problem here. A real one.
Something I hadn’t seen before, but now that I do—oh, it’s obvious. Urgent. Foundational.
Mentally, I’m in a simulation.
I take what he didn’t do and enlarge it past its natural size. I press my nose up against it, inspecting. The blocked pores. The uneven droop of the eyelid. It means something. And whatever it means—it’s not good.
I stop being in the relationship.
I start investigating it.
But here’s the part that doesn’t match the story I’m building:
I have a good relationship.
It is solid.
When I bring the conversation from earlier back to him—when I say it out loud—he listens. He even asks Evelyn to quiet down so he can hear me. My need to be heard gets met.
And just like that, everything right-sizes. The foundation is the same as it was yesterday. It will be the same tomorrow.
Nothing actually cracked.
But my attention tried to make it so.
And just because I feel shaky inside something doesn’t mean the thing itself is unstable.
Love, Jaclynn