In August 2020, a doctor said two words to me that have rattled around in my head ever since: “bipolar” and “disorder”. I was lucky. I wasn’t sectioned and no one, except me, had really been concerned about my behaviour. The doctor didn’t seem too worried, so neither was I. Off I went, unmedicated, with a sense of relief at having the great mystery of my mental health revealed.
For the next eight months, I persevered in my job and with a relationship that left me a guilt-ridden, anxious, isolated mess. By May 2021, my family decided it was time to evacuate me from London for a week of fishing on the River Findhorn in north-east Scotland. For years, they had dragged me along on fishing trips until I was old enough to resist. This meant days of tangled lines, grey skies, wind, rain, mud and tears. It meant sitting on the bank, cold and bored, being handed rods to reel in fish, struggling to cast.
Fishing always felt like failure to me because I just couldn’t do it. From the first time I picked up a rod, at six or so, something just didn’t work. Everything about it felt unnatural. I wanted to be inside, reading a book, curled up on the sofa rather than in the cold and wet. This feeling never went away.
But this time it was different. I found myself immersed in the gentle rhythm of step, cast, the swing of the fly. There were walks through the forest to different pools, a cup of coffee here and there, breaking for lunch with my mother, father and brother to dissect the morning, the joy of being outside. I was with my family rather than fighting against them, willing the days to last longer, not wishing them away. I felt confident and competent: I was completing and achieving something; I was a success rather than a failure.
On our final day, it was me who was up at 5.30am dragging my brother – a fishing guide – out of bed to accompany me to the river. I had caught nothing during the week. We pulled our waders on in silence under the damp hush of the canopy. I wondered how I had got here. At the beginning of the week, I had been overwhelmed by the prospect of six days on the river – it had seemed so quiet. Little did I realise silence was what I needed.
For several months, my mind had been so busy; I couldn’t sleep and I wasn’t eating. But most of all, life just felt so loud. Everything seemed to be an assault on the senses, from the howl of a bus on the streets of London to the scream of my internal monologue bringing me down and then up. Feeling alternately depressed and indestructible, the anxiety that ruled my life meant I couldn’t switch off. I felt alone in my misery.
On that final morning, I caught my first salmon as the water hissed and steamed in the sunlight. I found myself close to tears for the first time since my great dane, Baloo, had been put down, several years before. For the rest of that day on the river, I sat and enjoyed the sunshine. Catching that fish made me realise there was another way. I had control over the way I felt and I had found something that helped more than anything else. That small, shining salmon represented all of this. I was taking something back.
My fishing began in earnest. That summer, I piled on to the train on Friday evenings, hot and irritated, to fish in Wiltshire. It was enough to keep me going for another year – until the dam burst again and I started taking medication and going to therapy.
Fishing still plays a crucial role because it takes me away from everything. I leave London and find space to breathe. Wading into a river means stepping into another world, one in which the stakes only ever get as high as catching or not catching a fish. There is shared joy in success and laughter at failure. I also read, write, run, cook, swim, talk and laugh – but fishing is the thing that absorbs me most completely. In searching for silence, it is my complete companion.
I have something now that gives me hope when life is at its most unbearable. It can be fruitless and frustrating, but this contained misery is cathartic. Like my mental health, it has its highs and lows – and through these lenses it gives me perspective. Fishing has brought me self-awareness and respite; it is a sanctuary. As my father says: “Even when the wind is howling and the fish aren’t biting, it can still make things better.”
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