A couple of days ago, at my session, towards the end, I shared a poem I wrote with T. I've never done that before.

He starts reading, silently. He gets through the first stanza, then pauses, looks at me, and says, “I’m crying already.” He looks at me with such sympathy/empathy that I squirm. His eyes have tears. He reads further. This is hard. I look away. By reading this poem, not only is he in my mind, but my writing, which is so important to me, is on display. I feel doubly vulnerable. He makes noises of sympathy as he reads, then he says, "I like this line, like it a lot.” He reads further, then is done. He turns to me and emotes so strongly. I am almost knocked over. In this poem, I have shared my insides with him, the pain of my marriage, and the pain of my divorce, and he feels it, and reflects it back. It is almost more than I can take. I have put my pain into my poem so have been left almost empty. But by reading, he feels it and gives it back, and I feel it, more strongly through him than on my own. It is a powerful experience. He is almost crying again, and so serious, looking at me. I feel like he has finally understood. At last, I say, “that’s what is going on inside of me.” He says, “this is publishable, a poem about the experience of emotional abuse.” My eyes go downcast. He sees my life. This poem has communicated something to him that the many hours of our talking have somehow not. I am awed by the power of the written word. But we needed months to get to this point of closeness in order for me to share this poem. I am in awe of our relationship. I want to comfort him, as if it is his pain, because he feels it so strongly and I feel it more strongly through him, because to me, after so many years, it has grown mundane and I have many walls and defenses. And he has none against my pain. I am confused by what is happening, who is hurting and whose pain this is and who should be comforting whom. For a moment, it was as if we were one; we merged.

It was so freaky, now I'm wondering if I imagined this. We pretty quickly went back into "normal" therapy mode. What happened?