For years trying to put our story into some sense of order has been so challenging. When we hear others say, “oh back in X year,” so casually we have to do the math. How old were we in that year? Where did we live then? Which school? Who was out most?

Our memories are ordered by age, not by year. I forgot my age once a few years back, and had to do the math right there in front of my coworkers; laughing it off, and feeling embarrassed internally. It was not the first time we’d forget the body’s age, nor will it be the last. The Timline doesn’t change any, so why does knowing the age matter? It matters because that’s how we find the information. Or at the very least, it’s how we trace the obvious splits.

We start with the age, then move to season. Dates are lost. At times the month will be known, but the days themselves are lost. Usually. Unless there’s a written reminder somewhere that we come across, chances are it’s common to hear, “Had to of been Spring because X event hadn’t occurred yet.” Or some variation of that. We understand it is normal for memory to be this way.

Regardless, every time any one of us tries to write out any portion of our life, we freeze. The pen doesn’t move, the keys aren’t pressed, and the words vanish. The frustration with this is palpable. The interference is…in ways inevitable. Often it feels like a mix between our gatekeeper, Daniel, and an unknown (not named or seen, just felt) Little disrupting. We are still phobic of each other. Even after four years since being diagnosed, there is a wall between me and the others.

With the end of a near six-year run with a therapist coming to a close soon, we’re trying to put the major key points of the last six years into some semblance of order. The flurry of memories, quips, laughter, and tears. And somewhere buried inside is the answer to what do we about the freeze response. More often the words will vanish when I try to speak, and whenever our former Host tries to write there’s a blockage. What puzzles me most on all of it is we lived through these things. We survived at times we thought we wouldn’t, let alone our child brain be able to comprehend.

I’ve tried to do this exercise a few times over the last decade: write out everything I knew of a particular time and only that section. There’s a narrative to everyone’s life story. That narrative isn’t the end-all-be-all of a person (or System’s) journey. It changes and fluctuates with the ebb and flow of time and experiences. I am still sharply aware the bridge between logic and emotion is still being worked on. Some days I get glimpses of our more emotional parts, and other days I am overwhelmed by it. For our former Host the opposite is true. They felt everything in intensities, and to not feel as intensely was alarming. We are two sides of the same coin struggling with each other’s existence and memories.

I have my speculations about why the exercise fails. Even though I can recall a fair bit of the last decade, and with help the years before then, some parts believe to write things out means it must be true, or must be real, and cannot be changed. While the events the body has undergone cannot be changed, we can rework the narrative around it. Some parts fear having a written document can lead to parts who do not know about certain events, finding out about said events. It’s a matter of trust and parts feeling that I can handle the information.

I have this blip of a memory pop up when I think of this particular exercise. In fifth grade, roughly 8/9 years old, at the end of the year we had to write a brief story. We chose to write about the time we got a new bike. It had a left hand brake lever. For once we felt included, as we are the only lefty in the immediate family. We wrote it out, read over it, and somehow completely missed the fact we didn’t write out the middle portion of the story. There was the beginning, and an ending, but no middle section. Even then I felt the Little’s confusion. How did that happen?

Back then we would get roped up easily in our own little world. And at the time of that assignment, I suppose we got into a heated debate internally about how to write it out. What to keep, what to not say, and so on. Even though yes, getting a new bike was awesome, we also remembered brief snapshots of more painful moments that followed. Minor things to an adult, but absolutely huge to a child. Mom fussing about money, younger brother being mad he didn’t get a new bike (he had a trike and smaller appropriate sized bike at his disposal), and overall how it became a point of frustration. Within six months our younger brother would intentionally pop the front tire, and slash the seat.

And naturally we were angry about it. To the younger brother, dad could always just buy another. To us, we knew dad could not just go buy another bike. Money was tight. For expressing said anger we were the ones who were penalized. We “should [of] know[n] better.” I always pause at this point, because that bike was the only left handed object I briefly owned. Aside from a hand-me-down baseball glove that got little use as no-one in the family wanted to play catch all that much, there wasn’t much I could call mine. I had to share practically everything.

I’m ranting at this point. Damn you ADHD.