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.
