I\u2019m trying to remember if I slept last night. I know I started watching that show around 4:30 am until 6 am. In this latest episode the most predictable possible things happen. Joe, the serial killer bad guy, creates a distraction in the center of town by having his followers murder a bunch of innocent people. Then Joe gets away with his ex-wife that he\u2019s vowed to kill. They slip onto a boat and head out to sea, a poor plan, because the coast guard is already patrolling the water ways. Kevin Bacon\u2019s costar actress, a child cult member herself, is buried alive by the deranged followers of Joe. And Ella betrays Jacob. He confesses his love for her and she confesses her love to him, slits his throat while they embrace each other and says she also loves Joe and doesn\u2019t know how to love them both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today is the day I’m wearing the dress that I\u2019ve been saving for three weeks, for Brandon and I\u2019m quite happy with my choice. It\u2019s a blue dress with white lace sash around the center, so it creates a great hour glass look. It\u2019s one of the few dresses that I could find that had sleeves and I was worried about it being too short, but Betty is going matchies with me. My razor died right in the middle of shaving, so we get what we get. I think I got most of my leg hair, but I\u2019m not used to shaving, I normally just do full body wax. It\u2019s so much easier, she gets everything at once and I don\u2019t have to worry about missing areas, Josie does an excellent job. I miss her. Did I add that to the list of pros of finally getting out of here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Am I not feeling chatty? I don\u2019t know, my eyes keep wanting to close. I had dreams last night. Danielle dreams, unfortunately. But at least it didn\u2019t stick in my memory. I just went back to sleep or got up, I can\u2019t remember.I can\u2019t control the dreams, but I don\u2019t have to let them control me. I\u2019m antsy, I want to pace. I might pace. I\u2019m going to urge surf and try to gather my thoughts for a few more minutes. Breakfast should be called any time now. I hope we get to keep our Aries table, that\u2019s my favorite configuration since Rose and I sat together all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love the way girls lift each other up. Complementing each other is one of the first things that I learned \u201cas a woman.\u201d It actually first came up when I got my nails done and I noticed that getting your nails done is something you do for yourself to feel good, but that you share with other girls. Here we all love complimenting each other on outfits, on makeup, on shoes, on hair, or on anything else we might do during the day to make ourselves stand out or feel beautiful. The girls are so sweet to me when it comes to this. I barely made it out of the shower and Katerina was complimenting my dress, \u201cI LOVE your OUTFIT CLARA!\u201d She said it with such enthusiasm and I know she meant it. Most of the girls commented on my dress and I feel so cute, like super cute. It\u2019s one thing that rings true about what Danielle told me, there are sisters and then there are bitches. Sisters lift each other up, protect each other and overall have a positive impact on each other. Bitches compete for attention and try to undermine other women, either with passive aggressive behavior. All the girls here are, in my opinion, sisters. Everyone here is supportive and we all try to lift each other up all the time. I know that treatment is a vacuum and the real world is not nearly as safe as it is here. I guess that\u2019s another hesitation for leaving. I feel so safe right now, surrounded by people that care and are all going through the same thing. This is the most free that I\u2019ve ever felt to express my authentic self and I have to say, it\u2019s addictive. I don\u2019t ever want to go back to the shame or guilt of the life I was living. I am free for the first time in my life and I love it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For music today, I\u2019m going to listen to Lorde Solar Power and feel the transcending energy from her amazing voice, rhythms and melodies. Danielle may have introduced me to Lorde, but she doesn\u2019t own her and I\u2019m choosing to take her as my own favorite artist. She is unique in that she is a musician\u2019s musician with so much relatable pop sensibility. This is something I think is super uncommon. Other musicians that accomplished this were The Beatles and Nirvana. This puts Lorde in a pretty elite class of song writers. It also means that I can listen to her albums on repeat and find new things to love and appreciate every time I listen, much like Radiohead. Her voice is so perfect, I wish I could sing just like her, it\u2019s absolutely beautiful and at the same time, you can feel her pain, conflict, struggle and happiness in her songs. This sort of goes back to what I was saying about artist authenticity. Being able to carry a tune and even have a great tone isn\u2019t what makes a singer great. It\u2019s how authentic the feeling of their voices rings to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s something Muriel taught me about art, the subject is so much less important than enthusiasm. She once complimented on my painting that she felt my energy in my brush strokes and I captured that enthusiasm, when I was being critical of my work. I thought Lindsay\u2019s painting of the same subject was so much better, but according to Muriel, her brush strokes were mundane. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve never forgotten about art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who is Muriel? Muriel Partridge is my friend, mentor and teacher. The last few years I lived in Florida I decided to take private French lessons from an organization called Alliance Francaise. They\u2019re a worldwide organization dedicated to teaching French to students of all different backgrounds that want to learn for any number of reasons. Muriel was the director of the school in Orlando, FL and I spent two years taking private lessons from her. Muriel is still such an important part of my life because she taught me so much about French life, but also just life in general. She was Parisian and had a doctorate from Le Sorbonne, which is the French Harvard, essentially. She\u2019s also a twice published author. She was way, way, way over qualified to be teaching me beginner French, but she really liked me for some reason and kept me as her private student, instead of handing me off to any number of other teachers that worked for her. But a few months after starting lessons with her, she informed me that she and a select group of students were writing a play, which they then intended to perform at various places once its writing was complete. The group included an author and advanced French student, who also was simultaneously learning Russian, doing advanced French translations and had written several plays with his wife. Two engineers that worked for a major military contractor in Orlando. And Polly Anna, a Brazilian woman from Rio de Janeiro who was also a polyglot, fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. She did contracted technical translations for major companies. And a Columbian who was learning French for fun. When I joined the writing group, the plan was to write the play in French and perform it in front of English speaking audiences by having one of the lead characters act as narrator and translate for the audience. Eventually, after getting some really positive feedback on the play, we decided to translate the entire play into English and this is where I picked up. I was one of two Americans in the group, which gave me an interesting perspective. Actually, the multicultural nature of the group really made the group fun. We called ourselves the Five to Nine playwrights, because we met every Wednesday from 5pm to 9pm. We worked for nearly 9 months together and when we finished the play we decided we wanted to get the play published, something Muriel knew how to do, given she had her books published. I think what made it so fun is that the only motives behind the writing were having fun, doing something creative and enjoying the process. We typically had a couple of drinks while we wrote and would take turns bringing the drinks. Vodka and red wines were popular choices. It was one of the funnest times in my life and I loved those people, especially Muriel. She picked her friends very carefully and she saw something special in me, something I couldn\u2019t see. I was the least educated among the group, but I wrote a lot of the dialogue, especially the funny parts. We were extremely proud of our work and everyone that read the play gave us positive feedback. Unfortunately, I was married to Lindsay Marie Morris West and her insane jealousy of me being outside of the home made it hard to have time away. It\u2019s worth discussing Lindsay one day, but not today. We decided on a whim to move to Seattle and I left Muriel and my co-writers behind in Orlando. I regret that we never got a chance to perform our play. But I kept in contact with Muriel through email and Facebook and still get virtual cards from her on every major holiday. Her values included authenticity for sure. I\u2019d never met someone so smart, but also that embraced her eccentricity so purely. I love Muriel and miss her all the time. If I ever visit Florida, seeing her will be my first stop. I can\u2019t wait to introduce her to Clara, she\u2019ll undoubtedly accept and love me as I am. Maybe it was Clara that she saw all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s 9:51 AM and we have a lot of free time this morning which is making me a bit more anxious than I\u2019m comfortable with. If I have to pick between anxiety and depression, I\u2019m definitely picking anxiety. It\u2019s easier to cope with and it doesn\u2019t keep me as stuck as depression does. Not that I want either one mind you. Anxiety and depression seem to have an inverse relationship. I haven\u2019t been truly depressed in sometime, but anxiety has just gained more traction. When I was depressed and not moving out of bed, I rarely felt anxious, unless I missed medication or didn\u2019t get enough sleep. Does an equilibrium even exist where both are mild enough that I don\u2019t constantly feel them? I get that life\u2019s ups and downs are going to trigger anxiety and depression at some point, but must I really live this way forever. I did start off the morning with less anxiety and very low depression. Why does it pick up so rapidly around snack when I don\u2019t even mind snack that much, I swear. I minded less when it was snack A or B, but a shake or a muffin isn\u2019t going to kill me. I do hate the supplement that comes with a muffin, but I\u2019ve been drinking it. Maybe I\u2019ll skip it today. I don\u2019t know. Back to anxiety, yesterday I made it all the way through group without clonazepam. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m feeling that strong today, even using writing as my coping mechanism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have this weird paranoia about how autocorrect tries to predict my sentences. Like if I use the same word that it\u2019s predicting, does that make my writing too dull or generic? I actively try rearranging the sentences when it gives me predictive text for that reason. Plus, I love screwing with algorithms and throwing off their learning. In Google Docs there\u2019s this weird, \u201cLet Gemini write for you,\u201d option that I find especially creepy. What\u2019s even the point of using a blank document if you let AI write for you. I\u2019m not anti-AI or anything, per say. I just think using it smartly is imperative. Even as its accuracy and learning improve, it\u2019s still just a machine and it\u2019s not, in fact, living. The human brain still runs more efficiently, faster and with more creativity than AI will accomplish in my lifetime. At least I hope that\u2019s the case. Art is just an impression of life, so how can a non-organic, non-living thing create art without human direction and input?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our group today had us narrow down the things that are our most important needs. We started with 20, including people, places, abilities, etc. When I narrowed it down, I got down to Juniper, my ability to take care of Juniper, my home, my meds and my mother. The first thing I gave up was ever knowing Danielle or experiencing her influence on my life. I think she had more of a negative impact overall than a positive one. That makes me sad, but it also shows how warped my fucking priorities have been. All the energy that I\u2019ve spent on that relationship really meant nothing to me. I could have saved so much pain and suffering if I had just let her go before. Maybe years ago\u2026 before she bailed. I should have kicked her to the curb. I should have sent her to Toni\u2019s or something. Who knows if I would have even developed an eating disorder the way that I did. I mean probably, but the possibility exists that she would have disappeared sooner and I’d have begun my recovery, at least from her abuse, a lot sooner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m trying to remember if I slept last night. I know I started watching that show around 4:30 am until 6 am. In this latest episode the most predictable possible things happen. Joe, the serial killer bad guy, creates a distraction in the center of town by having his followers murder a bunch of innocent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/okclara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}