Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

I am only six and a half years old and I live with my parents, but I do not know for how much longer. Lately many black clouds have gathered, and they will bring a storm.

On Thursday, 9 June 2011, Mom and Dad were not at home. They came back separately, with long faces and in the mood for a fight. As I learned that day, Dad and Mom first went to a child psychologist and then to the lawyers. I did not go with them, because I am a child and children are not asked. Everything I learned was told to me by a bird, a green parrot. That day something broke inside me, and I will remember it forever.

Since then I often have a dream that I am alone in a boat in a black sea. I learned that my parents went to the lawyers to agree on how to divide me. To dismember my life, that is, and for each of them to take as much time as possible, as if I were a mobile phone product.

For some time now I have been living in sadness. I live in tension, I watch angry eyes, I hear clipped words, and I keep company with silence and anger. I am lost.

I learned what happened at the lawyers from the parrot, who in the end truly loves me. He came by himself and sat gently on my shoulder, and with his warm voice he told me the news.

There was Dad, he said, not looking at Mom, and Mom looking elsewhere. There were also three lawyers, to give advice and take the measurements. All of them wanted to help make my life a private agreement, more or less as the parrot put it. As he told me, all of them were supposedly speaking for my good. Each, of course, in their own way and for their own reasons. My parents with a lot of egoism, and the lawyers with a lot of knowledge. Their purpose was to find a form that could fit my unhappiness, which, whether they want it or not, fits nowhere. Only I know that, and no one else.

Dad's lawyer, the parrot told me, who could have been my grandfather, asked Mom why she was getting divorced. Mom was taken aback and did not answer right away. Either she did not know how to answer, or she knew and hid it. But I am too young to know. Will I ever learn why Mom wants to divorce and why she is in such a hurry to uproot me and take me to another house so I will not live with Dad?

Mom recently told me, to prepare me, that she and Dad are not well. I did not understand what she meant, but I thought that if they are not well, why do they not go to the doctor? A little later Mom told the others that she was divorcing because she could not live with that man, meaning Dad. Dad's lawyer corrected her and told her that this man was someone she had loved since she was young, that his name was Dimitris, and that he is my father. Then Mom, with great difficulty, began calling Dad Dimitris, and then Dad was carried along and began calling her Sofia. So difficult, so simple.

If I had been there, I would have told them to understand that even if they live separately, they must decide together about everything that concerns me. If I hear one thing from Mom and another from Dad, I will not be able to understand what is right and what is wrong. What should I do? What Mom tells me, or what Dad tells me? I will live in two houses, I will have two rooms, two wardrobes, two opinions about what is right and what is wrong. I certainly will not know what I should do. The responsibility is theirs. But for these things not to happen, they must start here and now to talk to each other and stop accusing each other, otherwise I am lost. Psychologists, medicines, and drugs are waiting around the corner.

While my parents were at the lawyers, they exchanged fierce looks and blamed each other, always for my good. The parrot told me that Mom and Dad had also gone to a child psychologist. They went to ask him what they should do with me. From what the parrot understood, the market is full of such child psychologists. Everyone says whatever comes to mind.

That child psychologist had agreed that I should stay fifteen days with Mom and fifteen with Dad. I still did not understand what he advised them. I thought: has he ever spoken with a child? Should he perhaps begin with me?

With the help of the lawyers, my parents decided when I would see Mom and when Dad, and they said they would also write a paper, just so we would not lose track of things. The bird did not hear well what they called the paper; they spoke about custody and contact and other lawyerly words. Then Dad said that at Easter, after Mom asked her lawyer, she told him to bring me home because she would call the police. Mom did not deny that. But I cannot believe my ears. Is it possible that the police could take me from one moment to the next? What wrong did I do? A little later Dad became very nervous and attacked Mom; he spoke to her sharply and provocatively. Again Dad's lawyer stepped in and admonished him, and then he calmed down. Mom's lawyer and the other lawyer joined the conversation and gave their own advice. Time passed, and from what the parrot told me, bargaining was in full swing and it was all about me, as if I were merchandise. Everyone there swore that they certainly wanted my good. That is how much they know about me, and that is how much they say. Is it wrong that I do not understand how we got here?

I know that my parents loved each other before I was born. It seems they never learned that love is sacrifice without return. Today they think they can fool me. Lately the way they look at each other when they put on an act says everything. Of course, they must have been told not to fight in front of the child. The child reads them with one glance, whatever the adults may say. Do adults know what a child thinks and how much a child understands? Today my parents have become enemies, and whether I want it or not, I am between them, though I am not to blame. I can do without that kind of love. I do not want to think about my life from now on. Divided between two people who unfortunately put their ego above their child. Between two people who go to lawyers and child psychologists in order to speak about me. I never imagined such parents, and of course I reject them. But it is too late now; I will have to get used to it. I will start keeping company with other children of divorced parents, to prepare myself for the hard things that are coming.

The storm has begun. The rain hits my face. There is fog. I cannot speak to anyone. I cannot let my anger out. I will try to cry. I cannot bear hearing that they love me while I am completely alone. I must do something. Now, or later, when I grow up and they take me into account? Sometimes I try to find a way to punish them, to show them. But I love them.

Now they are punishing me with their love. I did not choose them, of course, and that comforts me.

They will certainly give me food, clothes, toys, and they will want me to be a good student. Behind my back, though, they will fight about their money, their mistakes, their lost time. Who will shout loudly to them that none of that matters to me? I, their child, want both of them together and loving, as I often see them in my dream. I want them to think about what they will say so that they do not hurt each other.

I asked the parrot to talk with me from time to time. He accepted and promised me that he would learn to sing children's songs to me.

Athens, 17-6-2011
With hope for the best
Elpida