Somewhere deep down, you can still feel that five-year-old child you used to be.

It doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter how long it's been. It doesn't even matter what's going on in your life. You can still feel him, wanting the world to revolve around him; thinking he's the most important; looking for someone to protect and comfort him. He's always there, curled into a ball in the corner, fighting the tears threatening to escape his eyes and drown him whenever he's not the most important or the centre of everything.

He never leaves. He's always there, no matter what happens. He doesn't know how to show he needs help; he doesn't know how to show he's terrified of losing the people he cares about; he doesn't even know how to show he cares. He wants to be important to someone—needs to be important to someone—but he can never say it, because he doesn't know how. He's too vulnerable to be able to say it out loud. He desperately wants it, but at the same time, he doesn't think it's possible. He doesn't think it's right. 

Because why should anyone put him first, when they've got all these wonderful people around them?

Why should anyone put him first, when even he can't put himself first?

They shouldn't.

And every now and then, he ends up curling into a ball and crying again, because that's the only way he can express the way he feels. The pain, the loneliness, the guilt, the desires that make his heart ache — all the feelings he could never describe to someone else, because he just doesn't know how. Because he's just a child.

He has no skin. The only thing he can do is try to help and look after everyone else before running back to his bed and hiding underneath his blanket. In the only safe place he has, where he can pretend, just for a little while, he doesn't exist. 

And every now and then he cries again as he realises just how lonely he really is, before starting it all over again.