From inside out
(written several years ago)

I am writing this on behalf of all those inside this person. We are her personalities, insiders, or as she calls us, her voices. There are 50 plus of us on the inside, most of the time we are in her head. We can and do talk to her. She is what is commonly called the Host. It is her body; she is the person that was born. Throughout her life our host was abuse in many ways, by many people. No one would listen to her, we used to talk to her, but they told her we were not real and she was to ignore us. And so she tried.

We would take her hurt, when some one came to abuse her, she couldn’t take it, and so one of us would step in and come out, or would be created, by her unknowingly. She was unable to cope with it alone. And why should she? So she made us, each in turn as she needed. We used to ask, why should we suffer for her? What had we done to deserve being hurt so bad? But despite our questions we came forward and took her pain.

We don’t grow, why not? Because we are stuck at the ages we were created, some get can older, as they heal. But for us stay the same age year after year, and that may be all well and good if your getting older and don’t want to. But for us it’s like being trapped. We look in the mirror and wonder, who is that looking back, I think, I’m 15, but that isn’t the body of a 15 year old! Why don’t I have my own body? I’m real, I can speak. But no one wanted to know us.

It’s hard living inside another person. You have to go where they want to, unless you take control by coming out, which we can do. But now we have rules about that, and it’s hard, when you want to sleep but some one else wants to play. Or the Host’s body is tired, but its morning. It’s frustrating not having your own body, and being able to do the things that others your age would be doing, it’s very hard excepting that it’s her body and we have to do what she wants at the end of the day. After all we are part of her, she is not part of us,

For many years she tried hard to ignore us, but like a bad smell we wouldn’t go away. She created us for a purpose, that being to help her, and once we got over not being able to do what we want when we want, we had to learn to work with her, yes we are part of her, but we are individuals too. We have rights and feeling that needed and need to be taken into consideration. But equally she has rights, and her rights come first, as she could just take loads of medication and that would numb us into not existing, something that she and we do not want. Having set ground rules, like keeping appointments we have learned to work with her, which is after all what we were created to do.

Being inside a person has it’s good and bad points, for a teen its great looking like an adult, going where adults can go, but for those within the Host who are young it is harder, they are but children, and so often people who do end up speaking to them treat them like adults and expect them to understand, though they live in an adult body and have knowledge far beyond that of others there age, they behave and act like the children they are, we all behave in the manner of the ages we are. It’s hard to explain why you’re scared like a child, but to others you look like an adult. And that’s why we have to be careful witch personality is out, when we are not in our room, to protect us from the harm others who don’t understand could do.

There are some within us that we don’t know, we try our best to keep them inside, these are the ones who have not excepted that it isn’t our Hosts fault that they got hurt, they still blame her, and given a chance would hurt her. When they manage to come out they block us, this means that we don’t know what they are doing, and can’t protect our Host, and that is our worst nightmare, we were created by her to protect her, and to not be able to do it, hurts us. But we know in time they will see as we have seen, though our Host may feel it, she isn’t to blame in anyway shape or from for what has been don’t to her or us.

We know it’s hard for our Host, loosing time, and apart from times when we are all blocked out, we do our best to fill her in with any time that we may have been out. We tell her who we have spoken to. And what we have been doing. We try our best not to push our way out, and really only do that now without asking if we feel she is somehow at risk.

All we have ever wanted is to be acknowledged for the parts of our Host that we are; unique individual parts of one being. We just want people to try to understand, and may be say hello once in a while, we want to be able to take the littles (personalities under 11) to children’s shops without being stared at. We would like to be able to buy them toys without having to explain, we would love to be accepted as part of our Host. We are just like most people. We just want to be loved and cared about.

Our dream is to one day be able to show the world the wonderful person that we are honed to live within, to be able to show them the parts she has created. To show the world that we and our Host are not something to be scared of, as so many people are scared of what they don’t know or understand, we would love to help them know and understand the true gift of survival she has.