Speaking Parseltongue

There are dark emotions I feel that I cannot quite describe. It's a feeling inside that is not shown on the outside. It's a hidden feeling that remains numb and only felt through images or colors. It's like Harry Potter's natural Parseltongue.

My alternate personalities inside (I have dissociative identity disorder, or DID) were not always cheery characters; some were dark alters before they turned into protector alters and then integrated with me. Their anger became my anger at one point, but the feelings were still muffled and only expressed during safe times when I could "speak Parseltongue."

Numb on the outside, I dissociated inward to feel in a safe place known as the "inside world." Self-hypnosis is an automatic and daily process for me, and many days I'm living with one foot on the inside and the other in the real world.

The real world doesn't know Parseltongue, as it is masked by the Invisibility Cloak and a charm that hinders sounds. Creatively traumatized, my inside world's chambers were filled with screams and echos, the kind you would imagine in a Cathedral that was under attack by demons. All the secrets of our internalized abusers remained hidden inside this Cathedral, including their victims' screams - my screams after integrating with my dark alters' screams.

Parseltongue quelled the anger inside, as it mirrored that which must not be named in the real world. Silenced, muffled, and bound, I stood there frozen without a wand or any enchantments to break free my confusion. My emotions regulated, the alternate personalities fused, without a whisper about all the darkness that could only be translated through Parseltongue.

To me, Parseltongue is an emotion, albeit borrowed from the Harry Potter movie series. I gave my numb anger a name, and I comforted my confusion with some understanding.

The numb anger remains contained like a memory, its transformation in the form of muted justice - the kind that is self-healing, self-forgiving, and self-loving.