jumper dweller

In this post, there will be pics of my unshaven armpits (and legs), so beware, prepare to question all you've ever known! (I kid!) Body hair: it's safe to say it's a taboo for women.  There are plenty of womanly/non-binary folks going against the grain and choosing not to shave or wax or somehow other rip out hair unnecessarily. I'm not going to lie, I do feel a bit scared to write (and maybe publish?) this post. I'm not fully confident about showing my body hair. Maybe the photos in this post will be a bit of exposure therapy for me? But the main purpose of this post is to challenge a belief you may or may not hold about body hair being unfeminine or generally abhorrent for women. Let's get on with it! (Sorry if this post reads a bit odd, I'm very fired up by this topic, hence the potentially preachy tone). The basics: it’s not unhygienic, believe it or not Essentiality, and this is common knowledge, body hair is there for a reason. It protec

  Currently, I am drowning. In dissociation. Those two sentences should have been combined and that will bother me for the next few hours, until my brain is back to its original factory settings. Writing about dissociation whilst dissociated is harder than it might seem, but I thought it was important to record what's happening while it's happening. Future Louise might pop in (hi! I'm back!) and interrupt my ramblings with some degree of sense, hopefully, anyway. Dissociation is a disconnect. (Google describes dissociation as a 'state of disconnection') Suddenly once there, you are not there anymore. Nothing makes sense, everyone, including me, talks gobbledegook and I struggle to understand what's going on. I know I'm still me, I couldn't be anyone else, but the deep numbness and the staring and the thoughts-on-repeat persuade that I am to the contrary: I am not me, the logic and my mind at odds. Bringing myself back from an epi

Freehand and blindfolded drawings (I literally drew these with my eyes closed!) Mania: it begins with productive evenings, turning to late night organisation sessions and spirals into inescapable false clarity that manifests itself as confused speech, grandiose ideas and the inability to rest. Often those with bipolar, usually depressive/hypomanic type, miss or even chase the mania once it has been masked by medication and/or has passed. I was one of those people once. I've talked a lot about the 'schizo' part of the diagnosis of schizoaffective, whilst almost ignoring the bipolar aspect. It is now time, I feel ready, to talk about one of the poles: mania, and the work I feel blessed (not because it's good, but because I functioned well-enough for long-enough to make it) to have been able to create. Mania is an ill-designed rollercoaster. You go up and up and up, until what was once an enjoyable experience becomes a living Hell, because there is no gentle d