The People Behind My Eyes

On a day clouded, fogged over with transference it is hard to see the truth even when it’s right in front of your face.

This entry is about an ongoing situation between me and Keepers of Keeper’s Korner. The entry is about my feelings, my reactions, fears and lack of response to what’s been going on. This entry isn’t to explain what “really happened” but to explain how I’ve been feeling and about why it is now, after so many months of silence I’ve decided to process this out publicly. I am going to ask readers to take responsibility for their comments. If you choose to comment realize that you have the choice to be objective or take a side. I ask that you be objective. The major reason I didn’t want to do this on my blog is because I hoped I could talk to Keepers about things off the blog and not have our mutual blog friends feel forced to stand in the middle. Despite contacting her via email and phone I was unable to get this situation resolved. I was unable to talk it out and try and get some sort of resolution. Things got really confusing from there which is what this entry is about. Again, this entry is about my personal reactions, my feelings about what has happened and what’s been going on in my mind. Other than that I have no blog entry disclaimer. I’ve chosen to use her name because it’s not like people that read both our blogs are unaware of the two people involved. It seems silly to not use her name when it’s obvious to mutual blog friends who I’m talking about and who she’s been talking about.

Concerning my silence I said to a friend: “I worried that because people see her as a senior multiple that they’d believe her and I’d be high and dry out in cyberspace cause she lied and took everyone away making them think I was a predator and out to hurt others. I was so fucked up about that. (That belief is a transference issue.) Now Keepers is getting deeper with it, now she’s making me sound ungrateful for the camera and talking about all she’s done for others but I can’t see her efforts. One can begin to see how mother issues start to pop up for me and why it is important for me to simply walk away. For the sake of healing, for the sake of sanity I’ve chosen not to deal with this…..” until now.

About my fears and anger I said to a friend “This whole thing with her bad mouthing me on her blog has been going on for months, literally months and it’s racked my nerves something bad. I also worried that if I told people what she was doing it would make them leave her blog alone which then would make her come back and say she was right that Austin is out to shut KKCo down and is out to hurt her. It was a no win situation so I simply didn’t respond on my blog or on hers. I did however put up a little graphic on my site that said, “As for me and my blog we shall blog in peace.” It was my only statement to her. I refused to get into this with her…refused because there is no way to settle it. I’ve asked her several times to talk about this. I asked via email and by phone but she would rather dog me on the blog. She’d rather misquote me and talk about all she’s done for me and how ungrateful I am for it and if I’m ungrateful and unaffected by her then maybe KKCO should just shut down. What am I to do with someone like that?”

I kept thinking, okay this will blow over. I’d get comfortable then wham there was another entry about how horrible I was to her. In the beginning I thought that maybe people would think she was right and think that I actually was this horrible person. I saw her actions like those of my mother (transference issue). I thought they’d believe her, take her at her word and that it would somehow prove that I am as unlovable as my actual mother says I am. I kept thinking that all it would take for others to walk away, abandon me is the word of one person. It was like that with my mother. She could convince people …she could convince me of how horrible of a person I am. Keepers is not my mother, by far she is not my mother but when someone says I’m ungrateful or they say that I’m undermining them and their work, their dream I begin to hear my mother’s voice. It becomes hard to separate the two realities. So I clam up. I clam up for fear of misspeaking. I don’t want to fuel the flame nor do I want to be burnt by it. It makes a persons bones tired trying to figure out what they’ve done wrong, where the other person’s responsibility lies and how to resolve it without both people feeling like total fuck ups. So I’ve said nothing but I’ve felt a lot.

I was so depressed when our friendship ended. I use to think the best thing about Keepers and me is our differences in therapy. I thought our stories side by side let other survivors know that healing isn’t always one way, that therapists aren’t always good and they aren’t always bad. I thought it was good to stand side by side and show what we’d both been through and how we handled it so differently and how one way wasn’t more right than the other. I thought we made a great team in that regard. Now I’m angry with myself for getting comfortable enough to give a damn.

When I hear someone say that they’ve done everything for me, gone out of their way for me yet I wasn’t grateful I have to understand there is an undercurrent of their own issues. I understand when someone says something to the effect of, “I did everything you asked but you still weren’t happy” that they are talking more about the past than the present. It also doesn’t make it easier to hear that you can’t be satisfied. It brings up issues of “Am I bad?” It brings up issues of, “Does this prove that my mother was right? Do I destroy lives?” I’m trying to remember that I only have to ability to destroy myself. I am not powerful enough to destroy the lives of others especially from afar.

Austin of Sundrip
On A Cloudy Day In A World Of Transference Part 1 of 2 -Saturday, November 10, 2007

Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2