Why are your alters different from you?

I struggled with how to word this question- there's something deeper I'm driving at. Psychologists argue about the influence of nature vs nurture in a person's life. Does a person become the way they are (personality wise, behaviorally, emotionally), or are they born that way? All the different parts in one person may seem, at first glance, to throw an interesting curve ball into this debate.

I lived one life. I was born one way, and I was raised one way- so how in the world do I end up with parts, you ask, who are so starkly different? Easy.

Imagine a child, a small boy of say five or six. His home life is horrendous. He's beaten nightly, and starved of both love and sustenance. He lives in a poor neighborhood, and his teachers just don't care. No one does. One might say, "this boy hasn't experienced anything good in his life" - but really....that's not *literally* true: 

• Once, he went to a birthday party down the street. The family was poor also, but kind. He had a cupcake there. It was good. 
• Once, while his parents were fighting, his older sister took him down to the park. She pushed him really high on the swings- it was good.
• Once, his class raced from one end of the playground to the other, and he won. It was good. 
• Once, when he cried himself to sleep, he had a dream that he got a puppy for christmas- it was good. 

The human experience includes ups and downs, joy and pain. And no mater how much pain there is, there's always a little something to balance it. Maybe its just a stick to play with, or a beautiful sunset, but there's always something.

Not so for an part. Literally, every single experience they have, every moment they ever live, every single fibre of their life, is trauma. Daddy cuddles daughter, maybe its not bad at first. The core might remember that. The moment it becomes more than a cuddle, the part comes. What happens then is not good. When its over, daughter returns. The part only took in the bad. Only, ever, ever, the most horrid, most terrifying, most de-humanizing parts of life.

And that's why I'm thankful for my parts. The "worst" parts- the ones with behavior that I have to compensate for- that behavior comes from a place of deep pain, of purposely re-living what they've already lived. If they weren't there, that would be me. I'd be the willing prostitute, and the shoplifter, and the cutter.

At least this way, I still think those things are problems. I still want to find a way to show my parts there's more, there's hope, there's healing. If I was a singlet, how would I even know to look? I ride the bus every day, and I see people that remind me of my parts. I wish for them, that they had a core, a part of them inside that was locking them in at night, protecting them, taking their memories and processing them. At least this way, I know I have a choice.