The Others

They say it develops between seven and thirteen. Extreme stress. The kind that cracks a child open and leaves her to reassemble herself with whatever pieces are lying around.

I don’t remember much from those years. Just fragments. Hands. A taste. The way light looks through a locked door.

But the body remembers. The body always remembers.

That’s where they live now. The others. Seven of them mapped out, like constellations drawn by a frightened hand. Not the cool kind—no mathematical geniuses, no obsessive-compulsive detectives with quirky charm. Just fragmentations. Defense mechanisms. The brain’s last resort when the child can’t be the one holding the wheel anymore.

I don’t know how to handle this hypothetical situation? Okay, let’s switch to another part of you and see what it can do.

More or less how it works. More or less how I survived.

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Two are the most relevant. The most developed. Names. Desires. Personalities. Little ghosts with their own little terrible places.

Rafaela.

She must be seven or eight, but she lies about it. Says she’s twelve, older, big enough. Her behavior gives her away. The way she curls into small spaces. The way she asks for french fries like a prayer. The way she calls my lover mommy.

The whole world is too small, she says. And I believe her. Her arms don’t reach right. Her legs don’t fit the furniture. She’s a child trapped in a body that grew up without her permission.

She likes cartoons. Drawing. Cuddling the cats. But she’s terrified of Samurai Jack—something about the shadows, the silence, the way the villain doesn’t blink.

Sometimes, when I sleep, I see her dreams. She’s in a child’s body, small and soft, next to my lover. Mommy holds her hand. They’re walking somewhere safe. The kind of dream that hurts to wake from.

But Rafaela breaks easily.

Too much stress, too much fear, and she folds into herself. Sexual submission mode, they call it clinically. She offers herself up. Gives awkward kisses. Repeats the same phrase like a rosary: Do whatever you want, leave me alone afterward.

What a great childhood I had.

If she’s stressed and alone, she reaches for blades. Cuts her face. Her breasts. Whatever parts she finds attractive. In her mind, this is protection. An ugly body is not desired. An ugly body is left alone.

She learned that somewhere. I wonder where.

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Jota.

He’s a cis man. He’s been suffering from dysphoria because of my HRT.

We fight a lot.

Inside my head, I hear him giving orders all the time. Stand up straight. Eat something. Don’t cry. Stop being a disaster.

He’s organized. Well-presented. He likes to take care of the body—ensure its safety, its integrity, its masculinity. When I’m too ravaged to function, he takes over. He brings me home. He makes me eat. He drinks water like it’s medicine.

But he’s also a real jerk.

He judges everything I do. Portrays me as a walking catastrophe. He argues, strongly, that my mistress is also his—one of our current debates. I’m yielding, slowly. Yeah, bro, I’m gonna cut our dick off. You can be happy.

He doesn’t like my cats. He has little interest in movies or soft things. He enjoys talking, but he’s judgmental of everyone, including himself, especially himself.

Jota is the one who got me through the years of repping. The one who kept the body alive while I waited for permission to die. I owe him something. I also hate him a little.

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There are others. Less formed. More like drives, states, weather patterns.

The aggressor, for example.

That one forms when a person experiences constant abuse, and then—for some fucking reason—the abuse stops. The body misses it. The body doesn’t know what to do with safety. So it creates an alter. An exclusive body. To abuse itself.

Crazy.

But here we are.

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Seven mapped out. Seven ways of being broken into something that still breathes.

Rafaela, who wants to be small and held. Jota, who wants to be in control. The others, who want things I don’t have words for.

We share this body like a haunted house. Each room occupied by a different ghost. Each ghost convinced the others missed the right life.

I don’t know how to end things. I only know how to extend them.

So here we are. Still here. Still switching. Still surviving.

Do whatever you want. Leave me alone afterward.

Rafaela said that first. But sometimes I think we all did.