Content Warning: Readers may find the subject material distressing. Though no explicit details relating to SA are within, please take caution nonetheless.

This was not easy to write. Being this vulnerable is a huge risk for us. It was a pivotal moment for us in our healing. Acknowledging what we saw as a child has made it easier to begin talking about what happened to us. Accepting Tommy as he is helped us to learn how to be patient with ourself.  To accept the deep need to stim and self soothe without inner judgment. To be more kind to the parts of us deeply troubled by the experiences they hold. There’s still so much of my, and in whole the System’s, life I don’t know.

I asked Tommy why he wanted to share such a vulnerable moment for him. He said, “it’s part of our story ain’t it?”

September 30th 2021

We walked into therapy shaken inside. The days prior, I constantly felt anxious and dreadful. A fragment of a memory continuously forced its way to the forefront of my awareness. Each time prompting me to shake it off, unnerved and troubled. Added to that was the weight of a horrific nightmare that had us nauseated, causing us to eat less. We were struggling to eat as it was.

We sat on the couch in the waiting room, bouncing a knee anxiously while staring at the patterns in the rug. We waited for Auntie to come get us. When the door opened to the waiting room we jumped in our seat a little, startled. She noticed the strain on our face as we quickly walked down the hall. She didn’t speak until after we entered the office, taking our place on the couch. Usually, we would sit in the middle, but that day we didn’t. Instead we sat on the far end, closer to her recliner.

“How are you?” She asked us. “You seem out of it.”

I never know how to respond to that question. Not now, and not then. But with her, we never grew angry by it. Truthfully, she was the only person I could withstand answering honestly when asked. I wiped my clammy palms on my knees, too aware of the anxiety and tension in the body. I felt sick.

“Um, not great.” I said after a moment. Inside I couldn’t stop hearing the sobs of a young boy. “I keep having meltdowns and a piece of a memory come up.”

We paused, gauging if we could even bring ourself to talk about it. We would try. The room seemed to darken, and I swallowed uneasily.

“Have we ever mentioned Tommy?” I asked quietly. Auntie thought for a moment.

“I don’t believe so.” She responded. “Maybe once in passing?”

“Tommy’s a Little,” I explained, rubbing my hands together. “an exiled part I believe. I don’t understand why this memory keeps coming up. I just know he knows it. And,”

I kicked my feet a bit, trying to ground. I felt us beginning to dissociate. One of us chirped inside about the toy box beside the couch. We glanced at them and then away. Today seeing any facial expressions would overwhelm us further.

“We had to of been about eight or younger.” I continued while digging in the toy box for something to fidget with. I pulled out a small soft bear, staring intensely at it. My vision blurred a moment, signaling a blend or a switch was bound to happern. I looked towards the floor. “We were at my grandparents, for a visit.”

Inside my mind I saw the flicker of carpeted steps. I noticed the haze and smell of cigarettes. The stuffiness of the upstairs portion was suffocating. My stomach tightened. I brought my right hand up, rubbing at my temple. My left hand gripped at my knee as I tried to keep grounded. The crying inside grew to an unbearable volume. Auntie gave us a concerned look. For a second, I wondered if she could hear the Littles wailing so loudly.

“It didn’t happen to me,” I found myself saying quietly. It felt almost as if I had suddenly vacated my body. And in my place was a terrified child, gently turning the toy bear over in his hands. “But what I saw…”

Tommy felt utterly distressed, unable to contain the sobbing. He closed his eyes, and felt the knuckles rapping at the side of our head. We were no longer an adult. Instead, Tommy was there, every bit in a trauma state as the images unfurled in our mind. He never fronted before today, but he also couldn’t withstand keeping the secret any longer. It ate at him.

“I don’t understand!” he choked out. “I don’t understand.”

His fist hit harder, and harder, unable to stop. The intensity of distress mixed with anger and confusion overwhelmed us all. Our head was swimming, murky waters deceiving the depths of what Tommy knew. All we heard inside was “stupid,, stupid, stupid” punctuated by the thump of our knuckles.

“Gently, gently.” we heard Auntie say. Slowly Tommy stopped hitting our head.

Her voice seemed to cut through the thick fog of inner turmoil. Each hit softened as some of us took the opportunity inside to calm him further. I think there were tears in her eyes. It was hard to tell through our own blurry vision. Shame cascaded through us. It was embarrassing to suddenly cry without warning.

Tommy scooted further back in the couch, wiping at his nose with his arm, trying to be a big boy who didn’t cry. Tommy was the part of us who would hit the body as a way of self soothing. He was the one who rocked, tapped, and generally couldn’t be still. He was one of the oldest splits, but also youngest in age. He was still adjusting after having been exiled for years, forced into dormancy for his behavior inside. He was probably the most unmasked version of us as a child.

“I saw [younger brother] with our cousin,” he told her through gritted teeth. “They weren’t doing anything adult or whatever I think, but he was…”

His voice trailed as he searched for the words, steadily rocking back and forth for a time. Faint murmurs and warnings lingered in the back of our mind. His eyes stayed locked on the far wall, staring at a mental apparition of Daniel, the Gatekeeper.

Don’t tell them, it’s a secret! Daniel seemed to tell him wordlessly.

“Well it wasn’t entirely sexual, but I don’t know! I just, I just got the feeling it wasn’t right.” He said finally, deciding Daniel did not get to decide what was shared today. In some way, it was his own defiance to power dynamics. He thumbed the teddy bear focusing on the way it felt to keep from being pulled back into the memory.

We couldn’t tell them the details. It made us sick even remembering that day. Our cousin was only a year or two younger than us. Her and our brother were closer in age. We had wandered upstairs looking for them for some reason. Maybe to ask if they wanted to go play in the little patch of woods along the driveway. Muffled downstairs was the chatter of adults, the classic rock station on blast, and occasionally boisterous laughter. They hadn’t heard us coming up the steps, let alone the door opening. We pulled back the thick blanket that separated off the makeshift bedroom at the top of the stairs. We were stunned by what we saw. It took us a moment to even react.

I will never know what possessed my younger brother to behave as he did that day. I refuse to ask. We still remember how our head suddenly buzzed. The familiar falling inward and scattering as our brain tried to make sense of things. What troubled us most was immediately after was the instinctive knowing of what they were doing was considered “bad.” Tommy wept bitterly, the heel of his palms pressed into his eyes. Almost as if he pressed hard enough the images would leave. There were times we would get sudden flickers of this memory in particular. It was rare, but it always made us feel dizzy, weak, and nauseous.

“How is it we knew what [brother] was doing wasn’t right?!” he demanded. He took a breath and his voice cracked. “They said not to tell the adults. So they knew it wasn’t right!”

Children are curious. Children do not have a sense of right and wrong inherently. What we saw that day was borderline sexual. What we grieved in the moment of telling was not so much what we saw, but the implications. Our brother and our cousin had to learn the behavior somewhere. We recognized it from somewhere. The witness left us horribly uncomfortable, and dirty feeling.

“I get children will experiment,” I stammered out, Tommy receding to the back, suddenly too afraid from letting such a secret out. “I get that. What bothers us most is how we knew it wasn’t right. I don’t ever remember any talks with our parents about touch, or sex for that matter. And our brother, for some reason, seemed to gravitate towards things like that even at a young age.”

I wanted to heave. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide, and scrape my brain clean of the memory. It had been several days of inner meltdowns and over stimulation. I was exhausted by it all. I had little to no awareness of the memory prior to Tommy’s emergence. Only after Tommy had come back from exile did things bubble up. Some of us wondered if I was ready to know. Tommy sure as hell couldn’t keep it inside anymore, so one way or another I was bound to find out. Dems on the other hand just sat in the background, boiling with anger. Dems knew, and knows, far more about our history than I do.

“It wasn’t the first time,” I caught Tommy saying. “It was a game they’d play. I only watched for a minute but it still felt weird. Like I shouldn’t be seeing it. It made me feel gross.”

“And you weren’t curious?” We were caught off guard by Auntie’s question. “Some children when they see things, they tend to ask questions.”

I wiped at my eyes, trying to steady ourself internally. “No…It’s all so hazy. We remember feeling really uncomfortable. Like, it just hit us out of nowhere what they wanted to do together wasn’t right.”

My skin crawled. If Tommy knew of that day, what else did he know? Of all the Littles, Tommy was one of the deeply traumatized. Before therapy, before Hosts had changed, he was this boy internally who harmed others on the inside. He emulated the brother, who emulated the father; in turn emulating an abuser. He was mean. He was scared. He was just a boy deprived of safety and love, and knew no other way of life.

“It’s possible your brother may have been abused as a child himself and was reenacting.” Auntie suggested.

“Possibly, but I wouldn’t know.” We shifted uncomfortably. The idea made me uneasy. If true, then that would answer some of our brother’s behavior. Though it would not excuse his behavior years down the line.

“And then there’s the nightmare too.” I wrung my wrists, our eyes darting everywhere but Auntie’s face. “Tommy tried to…do things to me, like adult things.“

I couldn’t bring myself to disclose the details of awful that nightmare was. Not then. I was used to nightmares, used to the violence and depravity in them. This one was different. I still held compassion for Tommy, even if his reintroduction was some of the vilest aspects my brain conjured up. I still find it incredibly disturbing that most nightmares that involve any sexual assault there is a Little out front.

Tommy appeared in the nightmare as a wild eyed scrawny teenager. No older than 13, with a mop of dirty blonde shoulder length hair. Anger scrunched his dirtied face. In the nightmare he held a knife and proceeded to attack us. He tried to rape us, beating us violently. And when he couldn’t, he tried to mutilate his own body and cut out his tongue and teeth. We were mortified, hot with anger, and deeply concerned. It’s a strange feeling, knowing the person you interact within a dream is a part of the system. There’s substance and life to them, whereas true dream people have none whatsoever. Even in that nightmare he wept, repeating “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to.”

“You have to show Tommy a new way of being.” Auntie said after a moment, their voice bringing us back to the present. “Remember, persecutor alters tend to emulate the abuser. And Tommy chose your brother, who also looked up to your father. Show him it doesn’t have to be this way.”

We nodded, letting the idea sink in.

“Y’know, we’ve never told anyone about this before?” Tommy shifted. “I’m glad I told you. Even though it was really hard.”

Pt. 2 Continuation.