Host/core (me): I'm doing relatively well. No true emotion, except some laughter and some relief and some stress and some anxiety all mixed into a calm package - that's the best way I can describe "me."

Inner child: She's crying, but she won't say why. I think we read something that was triggering, but she doesn't know. She's crying and wants a hug. I go inside to try to give her a hug. She's still crying.

Host/core (me): My reaction being back out again is that I don't know what is going on. There's a lot of new changes in my life - from the move out of state to the contact with various mentors to my grad application for Fall next year to a new treatment team at the new VA next week to being on PC and processing some stuff. It's enough to make me feel small and little and miss some things, but there's something in my past, in my young part's past, that I haven't gotten over or even acknowledged, but I'm affected - my parts are affected.

Being integrated with some of the others, I feel a bunch of different emotions connected with blank thoughts. Just emotions. Just wanting to crawl into a ball and sleep and cry while hugging a pillow. I don't do this, but inside my little does this. I'm cleaning up my apartment or doing some other adult person task, and in the inside background I see my little part just crying.

Does this mean I want to cry but can't? Does this mean there's something I'm not acknowledging to myself (i.e., my part)?

I sometimes get these responses from teen alters, but most have integrated with me and I deal, regulate. In the past, the teen alters would be vocal if I asked them a question, but the hardest part is acknowledging an unnamed inner child who is so tiny, so alone.

I don't want to cry on the outside. I want to just be happy and positive and move forward. And all my fears of new treatment teams and applying to grad school and worried about what any authorities in my life are thinking about me do tickle my emotions, but I just don't want to think about it all. I just want the fears to pass me by, and the emotions to pass by with them. I just want to wait patiently and see what happens, and not worry about the outcomes. I just want to sit here and feel proud of my accomplishments, and be patient and wait.

The little one inside me wants to cry.

The me integrated with teen parts wants to fret and to be upset and feel that life is unfair, so I tell myself calmly that life is not about fairness to me. Life is about me being fair with me and others, and that's all that I have within my control. I can voice, and I do. I can acknowledge memories and the pain that comes with them, and I do. I can acknowledge what is going on inside, and I do. And I'm patient with myself and my parts, and so I wait and try and communicate and wait some more.

The inside tears are invisible to those on the outside and therefore only visible to me. The inside tears long for something more than what I've ever received, and such longing can never be fulfilled by anyone because it is a part of grief. All I can do is acknowledge that pain in a detached way right now.

If I attach to that pain, I fear I will never come back out of it. I fear that I will screw up in my recovery because I'm trying to do this all on my own. I also fear that if I try to express this in recovery, I will be iatrogenically harmed, if not intentionally.

So I still see the inside tears from a distal perspective - me, but not me, detached, but living within.

I will eventually be able to have outside tears, but the inside tears need comforting and space to heal. It's not a decision I can make overnight. For me, it's a process.

I'm sorry, little one inside, I wish I could make you feel happier and more comforted, but all I can do now is just hold you and tell you that things will eventually be okay - in time.