The life of Alex, Zora and Rigby - a drawing about my childhood/adolescence by means of my vulnerable parts

Trigger warning: This text and the drawing deal with the issues of child sexual abuse, child abuse, and bullying.

The last two days I made a rather big drawing - 146cm x 56cm - of the life of Alex (my inner boy/child), Zora (my inner girl) and Rigby (my inner adolescent). These three are the vulnerable parts of my inner community, the parts that have taken the brunt of my trauma. I felt the need to do this, as two days ago I found a key piece in the puzzle of my life that was missing. Suddenly, things started to fall into place and everything made sense.

The drawing itself is in Spanish, and won't be translated. So I will give some more explanation in this text than in the Spanish text.

The drawing begins with my birth on 29 June 1964. The first 18 months of my - our - life, myself, Alex, Zora and Rigby were all the same. Until - until the birth of my little sister, on 6 January 1966, which marks the beginning of emotional abandonment and neglect.

Alex is my little gender bender. Their life is reflected on the top left of the drawing, and is pretty short. Alex is the part that experimented with their gender expression, meeting with rejection, especially from my/their father. This culminated in sexual abuse: "If you want to be a girl, suck my cock". Alex got stuck in this moment, maybe five or six years old, until I started to connect with them in December last year.

Zora, my girl, is the part with whom I already have the longest relationship, for about a year now. Her life is the middle section of the drawing, starting on the left side. At the beginning she hid, especially seeing what happened with Alex because of their gender expression. But when Alex "disappeared", froze, she was trapped, Zora could no longer hide, so she was the one who took the brunt of the sexual abuse. I wrote in December: "My girl feels that she took all the abuse, especially the sexual abuse, as my boy hid when the abuse came. So, initially my girl had a lot of anger, and one of the first days I found her one morning hitting my boy, and my boy let himself be hit without defending himself, in silence." But the truth is that Alex just wasn't there anymore, they were frozen, traumatized.

I don't know when and why the sexual abuse ended. Zora was also bullied in primary school - after we moved to a suburban neighbourhood - and responded to the bullying with rage, with violence. This culminated in my/her mother threatening to abandon her completely, to send her to an orphanage. Zora got stuck in this moment, until I found her, trying to hide, in February last year. Since then we have come a long way together.

Rigby seems to have had a different life. Rigby is my inner adolescent. His life is at the lower part of the drawing. As a child, he suffered more from my/his mother's mistreatment and emotional abuse: using him as her doll to satisfy her needs and leaving him unattended when Rigby needed attention, and her invasions of his intimate space, from unwanted and expressly refused physical contact/touching to going into the shower and looking at/touching his penis to "check" that he had washed it well. Rigby felt humillated. He never felt seen or understood.

The threat of total abandonment that froze Zora was also taken very seriously by Rigby. With Zora's disappearance Rigby was left alone, and he had learned the message: eat your anger, suffer in silence, don't complain. After Zora's disappearance, Rigby was bullied at school, bullying that turned into homophobic bullying. He also had confrontations with his father, over the issue of his Lutheran confirmation, his long hair, and other things. With each thing Rigby put on another layer of armour so he wouldn't have to feel, so he wouldn't feel anything.

When I finally left my parents' house to study in another city - 250km away - Rigby got stuck in his parents' house. Until I managed to connect with Rigby too a few months ago, to get him out of the house and into my internal community.

Now I understand why during the first years of my therapy I was mainly able to work on my mother's violence, abuse, neglect. I mainly had access to Rigby's memories, though less to his emotions. I wasn't aware that it was Rigby, more likely my memories coincide more with Rigby's life, my mind did not have to block out these memories. Alex and Zora during these years "did not exist", I had no access to their lives, their experiences. Connecting with Zora a year ago allowed me to work on sexual abuse, and connecting with Alex allowed me to work on my gender identity in/since childhood.

I now feel I have a "complete" narrative of the first 20 years of my life, thanks to Alex, Zora and Rigby.