IIn August 2020, a doctor said two words to me that have stuck in my head ever since: “bipolar” and “disorder.” I was lucky. I wasn’t assigned and no one but myself was really concerned about my behavior. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, and neither did I. I left, drug-free, with a sense of relief as the great mystery of my mental health was revealed.
For the next eight months, I persevered in my job and in a relationship that left me a guilt-ridden, anxious, isolated mess. In May 2021, my family decided it was time to evacuate me from London for a week of fishing on the River Findhorn in northeast Scotland. For years they had dragged me along on fishing trips until I was old enough to resist. This meant days full of tangled lines, gray skies, wind, rain, mud and tears. It meant sitting on the bank cold and bored, being handed rods to reel in fish and 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 fishing rod, at six o’clock or so, something just wasn’t working. Everything about it felt unnatural. I wanted to be inside, reading a book, curled up on the couch instead of out in the cold and wet. This feeling has never gone away.
But this time it was different. I found myself immersed in the gentle rhythm of the fly’s step, cast and swing. There were walks through the woods to different pools, a cup of coffee here and there, a break for lunch with my mother, father and brother to dissect the morning, the joy of being outdoors. I was with my family instead of fighting them, willing the days to last longer and 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 last day, it was me who got up at 5:30 am and dragged my brother – a fishing guide – out of bed to accompany me to the river. I hadn’t caught anything all week. We donned our waders in silence under the damp silence of the canopy. I wondered how I got here. At the start of the week I was overwhelmed by the prospect of six days on the river – it had seemed so quiet. I didn’t realize that silence was what I needed.
For months my mind had been so busy; I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. But most of all, life felt so loud. Everything seemed like an assault on the senses, from the howl of a bus on the streets of London to the scream of my internal monologue that took me downstairs and then upstairs. Feeling alternately depressed and indestructible, the fear that controlled my life made it impossible for me to stop. I felt alone in my misery.
On that last morning I caught my first salmon as the water hissed and steamed in the sunlight. For the first time since my Great Dane, Baloo, had been put to sleep several years earlier, I was close to tears. The rest of that day I sat on the river and enjoyed the sun. When I caught that fish, I realized there was another way. I had control over how I felt and I had found something that helped more than anything. That little, shiny salmon represented all of this. I took something back.
My fishing started in earnest. That summer, hot and irritated, I boarded the train on a Friday evening to go fishing 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 in a river means entering another world, a world where the stakes are only as high as catching or not catching a fish. There is shared joy in success and laughter in failure. I also read, write, run, cook, swim, talk and laugh – but fishing is what occupies me most. In the search for silence it is my complete companion.
I now have something that gives me hope when life is at its most unbearable. It may 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. Pisces has brought me self-awareness and peace; it is a shrine. As my dad says, “Even if the wind is howling and the fish aren’t biting, it can make things better.”