How can this life be real if it doesnt hurt?

Its all we know. We have no memory of anyone ever showing us kindness. A hug, a cuddle, a warm embrace where we felt safe. Nothing never. There was no safe place to hide, every where we went there was hostility and pain. This is the life we know. We know the pain, the shame. When there is no safe place to turn, you can find your home amongst the pain. It becomes the right way to be. It becomes life. It becomes home. Without it things just don't seem right, we feel uncomfortable, like we are wearing the wrong clothes. Constantly fidgeting and feeling unsettled. Until it returns and with its sting, peace. A calmness with its bite. We know it is not good, we know it is not how we should live, but it is all we know. It is not home unless it hurts. Pain is what has damaged us so badly but is also now our friend. To be humiliated, abused, brings us back to what we know how to handle. We know where to go with this, we have the skills and the knowledge to get through it this way. But without the pain we feel empty, alone. We feel numb, like nothing is real. We feel homesick, we long for how we "know" it should be. How we need it to be. They have trained us this way.

Finally its starting to make sense.

Finally things start to make sense. We have been sharing our experiences of trauma with my our mother over the last few months. Hearing about it has triggered a few things in her memory. This morning we managed to put a few pieces together. My father's erratic behaviour now makes perfect sense. Even things that seemed odd to my mother years ago when they happened, now make perfect sense in the light of the information we have given her. We all thought he was just crazy, now we know he is a very intelligent calculating man. But we are putting the pieces together now. Finally it is starting to make sense.

Tired

So tired of being multiple, just so tired as a whole really. It takes so much energy to keep going. Trying to deal with everyone in my head as well as the people I see in the outside world. We went into a second hand shop today and one of our little girls saw a doll she wanted. It looked a bit old and festy and I didn't want to get it. Besides all that, it was way to big for us to discreetly hide in our room. When I said no she got very upset. Dealing with children on the inside and the outside gets a bit much. Some days I wish we could just be one!