Love with nowhere to go

Holding it alone

Holding those heavy feelings alone got too much. I let go of the reins to my own life, in a moment of despair. In moments when I am better, I realise the pain and suffering I unintentionally could have caused, is devastating and truly hard.

Listening to my therapist telling me how many of her clients, sitting in the chair I am sitting in, are there because of a parent's life ending before its time. The words she speaks hit me, sending waves of emotion through me. Eyes flooding with tears, gut crunching shame. The world briefly flickers.

Reflecting on my own children was intolerable. I needed to hear exactly that, to snap me out of it. This is the exact reason why I keep coming back to this chair, doing my best. I believe that this is what we always do, we do our best. Without the right tools and support, doing what is best isn’t always available to us.

What alienation teaches

Parental alienation is something mold-like, spread by spores that you can't see, affecting your breathing and taking hold where it lands. The power it has is so profound and will have lifelong consequences for everyone involved. The person I chose to have children with is teaching them to doubt me. To reject me. I still can't fully believe it.

It doesn’t stop with the alienated parent. It includes grandparents and anyone that is close to the alienated parent, including other children in blended families.

My purpose was to bring them up. Feed them. House them. Love them. Teach them values and resilience in life. Show them by example how to treat others on their journey in life. How we treat our own parents, their grandparents. How we can make a difference in this world, by doing the right thing. Stopping by someone that is struggling, checking on neighbors, paying for someone's groceries when a card is declined, giving away food to a homeless person. I literally can see the spark in my daughter’s eyes, when these things happened. A little hand squeezing mine harder. They know what good looks like.

Small things matter and they add up.

Parental alienation is the opposite of this. It teaches fear, intolerance, hate, suspicion and distance. And this hits me the hardest, because I feel like I failed in fulfilling my duty to my children, to bring them up and give them solid moral principles to stand on. Hate fosters hate and love fosters love.

Not knowing where I stand, what is being said about me, or what they actually think feels unbearable.

The made-up beliefs that are harnessed to make this possible must be very hard to carry. I know the feeling when I have done something I shouldn’t have done, the feeling of lying. It haunts me to this day when I lied as a kid, and the lie became impossible to get out of. I doubled down, instead of being caught. Is my alienator trapped like this, not able to get out of it?

The manipulation has been going on for a decade without me realising it, and it has had a heavy effect on my health. Because of the isolation I have been subjected to, the story is completely one sided, and people that I thought would be concerned for the kids’ well-being and ask questions are turning a blind eye. I met one at a school show recently, struggling to park her car in a busy side street of the theatre. I spoke my hard raw take on the situation, her eyes frantically avoiding mine, her whole demeanour desperate to move on. I was left feeling empty and forgotten. I wasn’t heard nor understood. It felt like trying to talk to a wall, my words didn’t penetrate its purpose, and that was to keep my words out.

Love with nowhere to go

I love my kids, and this love has nowhere to go. It festers and turns into doubt, regret and loss. The inability to resolve this is eating me up, day by day. The worst feeling is that they are being told untruths persistently, in an adult way, leaving them with little defence. The easiest way forward for them is to accept it and go with the alienator, to avoid internal conflict and pain. But at what cost?

I can't answer this question, but I can show them through how I live. I have my reins back in my hands. Learning to steer with gentler pulls. This is about doing to myself what I would do for others. Maybe one of the most difficult things I am trying to achieve. And my children are with me in this, even if they don't know it.

I hope one day I will read this and think back, fill my lungs with clean air and breathe out long-held pain. I hope to do this together with my children and maybe their children. Where we can talk about what has happened. Talk through the pain it cost and the time lost. Not brush it away, not try and forget, but to look forward to better ways. Even not to condemn, as I don’t wish this upon anybody else.

Love Pappa