As above so below, as within so without. I keep reciting the hermeneutic principles in my head. Over and over and over again. As the universe so the soul.
I snort; involuntarily spraying rain water. Right. Now I am gargoyle waterspout. Hear me blubber! The universe’s responds for the soul, my arse! Well if not the universe so at least the local weather front that haunted my lunchtime walk. I tried to escape. I would say I tried to outrun it, but who am I kidding a lame duck who just had lunch could outrun me and that’s on a good day. I am getting pelted now. Soaked to the bone. I don’t feel it though. I am still walking, yes I have not yet even turned around back home. I will walk until the thunder within has calmed as the thunder above. I will walk until I can feel my skin again. I will walk until the rage abides, until I put the image of the narcissist back into a black box. I might imagine a couple of swords stuck through the box like in a magic trick. Anything to hold her in place and stop me from calling and give her what she wants attention. The universe responds to that image is a sudden whiteness. For a fraction of a second I can’t see anything but light and then the world booms and an oak tree falls.
I have nothing to say That could sway you I have nothing to say You are able to hear I have nothing to say That would touch you I have nothing to say You could understand
You have nothing to hear But your hatred You have nothing to hear But your spite You have nothing to hear But your darkness You have nothing hear That would give you respite
For years I try to find words For years I try to understand For years I try to empathize But all I can speak of is darkness But all that I can grasp his vile But all I can feel is evil projectile vomiting of hate
Today I am not sharing my own work, but the work of my partner. He has worked in light-design for over 17 years, and on parental alienation day 2019, finally decided to create his own designs. The development took about a month, and as any good perfectionist, there are much more and more sophisticated things to be done if there would have been more time. The LED screen is 7×2 meters.
Background Interview
I interviewed dad erased before the live stream.
What was your inspiration?
I wanted to use colour and movement within the words displayed to highlight my own personal fears, anxieties, worries, and hate (anger) in dealing with parental alienation What inspired me were a lot of the words from various Twitter, Facebook, Blogs account of people talking about their own experiences of dealing with Parental Alienation and how they miss their kids, and the fights they have with systems that are adversarial; who choose to have a winner and a looser.
The other part of the inspiration (or admiration) is how, even after 10/12 years of battling with everything being against them in most cases they eventually are able to have an ongoing relationship with their kids. The saddest ones I have not talked about are the relationships that have not been fixed, the utterly completely broken relationships, and how it affects the targeted parents and the children as well, and sometimes it doesn’t get fixed, and it is such a loss of time, such a loss of time.
How did you go about developing the installation?
How I have done it is: this is just a tiny glimpse into how I feel about parental alienation. There is so much more that you could say; you could spend years researching PA and come up with so many different scenarios and situations and feelings and words. What I am trying to say is … the more I get into it; the more feeling I get behind it, and hopefully I can express better how I deal with it or how I am not dealing with it as an alienated parent myself.
What do you want to achieve?
I want to give a voice to the unseen who are lost in an adversarial system who chooses to establish winners and losers, and ultimately fails our children.
This is the glossary for the Abbreviations Section:
SAID – Sexual Allegations in Divorce CIAF – Child Impact Assessment Service VotC – Voice of the Child CMS – Child Maintenance Service CSA – Child Support Agency PASG – Parental Alienation Study Group PAAO – Parental Alienation Awareness Organisation Cafcass – Children and family court advisory and support Service NAAP – National Association of Alienated Parents MATCH – Mothers apart from their children FNF – Families need Fathers JUMP – Jewish Unity for Multiple Parenting FPS – Family Psychology Solutions DADs – Dads Against Double Standards PAPA – Parents Against Parental Alienation F4J – Fathers for justice SPARK – Support for the Parentally Alienated thru Random Acts of Kindness PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder WHO – World Health Organisation AAPA – Association Against Parental Alienation PAS – Parental Alienation Syndrome SPAN – Stop Parental Alienation Now PAWWSG – Parental Alienation World Wide Support Group FRI – Fathers Rights Ireland EAPAP – European Association of Parental Alientation Practitioners PAAA – Parental Alienation Awareness Association HAP – Hostile Aggressive Parenting PAA – Parental Alienation Awareness NAOPAS – National Association of Parental Alienation Specialists PASI – PAS Intervention NPO – National Parents Organization NPAF – NATIONAL PARENTAL ALIENATION FOUNDATION CSPAS – Canadian Symposium For Parental Alienation Syndrome PAD – Parental Alienation Disorder ECTHR – European Court of Human Rights ECHR – European Convention of Human Rights HRA – Human Rights Act Unicef – UN Convention on the Rights of the Child PEF – Platform for Europeans Fathers ICD-11 – WHO International Classification of Diseases JM2P – I Love My 2 Parents APIPDF – Association for Parental Equality and Children’s Rights BOLD – bubbles of love day HCS – High Conflict Separations CAFE – Canadian Association for Equality
I worry
Every day
That the sadness will take over
Engulf you too much
I am sad
For them
I know how no dad feels like
The echo is still painful
The border between
The three of you
Isn’t permanent
But it might as well be
The Mexican wall
Is her manipulation
As intangible as the other narcissist’s dream
But solid and prohibiting
All the same
They are lost on the other side
With no way to cross
Their covert and overt attempts
Scrambled
Under a gaslight burning so much oxigen
They can’t breathe anymore
Meanwhile you try to build wings
With duct tape so old it won’t hold anymore
Meanwhile you try to build a bridge
But the Lego bricks are brittle
Meanwhile you try to make a door
But the rusty hinges are jammed
You never know if they know
Off your attempts to scale the wall
You never know if they think
You abandoned them
That’s what’s on the propaganda channels
All day
All night
No matter how often they try to change the channel
They do not see your pain
They do not see your grief
They do not see your sadness
They do not see your broken hopes
The radio is too loud
There is some advertisement in-between the propaganda
Positive reinforcement with expensive presents
The media output is relentless
The words are vile
They cannot hear you hammer
They cannot hear you cry
The prefixes you have for me Usually start with fucking (insert derogatory term here) You used them the moment you knew off me Not anything about me–just off me
A threat to your carefully spun web of deceit Of course you feel threatened by me You cannot manipulate me You cannot predict me
Your open threat: ‘Hands down I will win.’ Won’t work with me I am healing–the noun That means I am ripping off band-aids
Granddad always said: ‘Let air touch the wound to heal.’ Air, and light, and love You won’t stop me loving them You won’t stop me healing them
But you, you For you I have given up I have let go
And as of now –after enduring years of your prefixes– For you I have a suffix May she rot in hell
Poetry by Nathalie 