Who holds yours

Supervision. Priyanka asked it flat out this time, no case to hide behind: who holds yours. I said I have Tess. She said that is one person and it is social and it is reciprocal, which is right and is also a good friendship and is not a container. I said I have you. She said this is supervision, and I pay for it, and I am contractually obliged to be here. She was smiling. It was not a telling-off. It was the thing she has been circling since about May and she had clearly decided today was the day. I said I know. And then I said, I think I have been treating the fact that I am functioning as evidence that I do not need anything. And she said: and what do you do when a client says that. I said I ask them who taught them that functioning is the bar. And then I sat there, because I know exactly who taught me that functioning is the bar, and it is a house in Greenfield in the nineteen nineties where my mother did the January arithmetic at the kitchen table and nobody in that house ever once said they were struggling, and the whole family ran on it beautifully for about thirty years.

About four seconds, honestly. I have never put them next to each other before today and the moment I did it was completely obvious. Which is embarrassing for somebody who does this for a living, except that I think it is actually the point — it is obvious from outside and invisible from inside, and I have been inside it since I was six.