3 hours ago
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‘Please sit down,” I begged my neighbour, who was leaning across the car gearstick, arm stretched around my headrest. My pleas for him to fasten his seatbelt were futile. Now he was jigging about, gesticulating wildly as he revealed his latest plans.
He had told me before about the script he was writing for Gary Oldman. I hadn’t thought too much of it, then – all writers have to be a bit grandiose, I had reasoned, otherwise they wouldn’t achieve anything. But now he was telling me he was inventing a flying machine, from which he would fall – and I quote – “like a sycamore seed”. “You very much won’t,” my partner muttered. “What goes up, must come down.”
That morning, he had arrived at our door with an extensive shopping list that he demanded we procure for him from Tesco, saying that only the very best red wine would do. Caught off-guard by this bristling confidence, we’d compromised and offered a taxi service instead. At the supermarket, it transpired he had no money – we didn’t have much either – so we got what we could afford and went home, trying to make our new friend promise he would not attempt the flying stunt anytime soon. I wish I could write that we did more to support him. We were young and barely supporting ourselves. The neighbour became very quiet after that, and eventually moved.
Some years later, I thought of him. It was a fleeting recollection, like all my thinking at that point. I looked in the mirror, and instead of hating my reflection, as I had for the months previously, I was suddenly glowing with positivity. How lovely, I reasoned; after several years of severe depression, I must have turned a corner. Except it was more of a sharp bend. I hadn’t exercised for months, but that morning I practically sprang out of bed and announced that I was going for a run. When it ended, I set off again.
It can take many years to understand that a high can be just as dangerous as a low. Self-care seldom says to watch out for impressive productivity and witty repartee. My neighbour had been experiencing an acute manic episode as part of bipolar disorder. Eventually, I would receive a similar diagnosis: hypomania. These highs are less intense, often associated with creativity and, in my case at least, are less frequent visitors than the lows.
Unable to fully escape depression, I rolled out a red carpet for these rare experiences. Allow me to deep clean your house and rewrite your CV, for nothing will tire me! I saw this as a well-earned treat after months of listless sadness. I took risks; I flirted recklessly. I made choices I cannot yet write about. The depression, when it returned, was worse than ever. Back on the therapist’s couch, we unpicked my 20s. “What goes up, must come down,” she warned. And so now, when I start to feel my heart pounding in my head, I lie down. I do not look at my phone; I do not attend a work event. I wait, just like I do when depressed, and focus on getting better.
In my quest for wellness, I reconnected with a childhood passion: butterflies. I spent my 30s trudging around woodlands and meadows in an effort to see every British species. I like collecting, and this hobby is all about collections; seeing males, females, mating pairs, aberrations. Some butterflies are easier to find than others – a peacock lives up to its name, rainbow wings with unblinking, heavily made-up eyes. Others live in the canopy, only venturing to terra firma in particular circumstances. It’s a wholesome hobby, or so you might think.
In The Butterfly Isles, the Guardian writer Patrick Barkham wrote about the curse of the purple emperor, a spectacular, elusive insect that – for two weeks of the year – will occasionally descend to the ground to take salts (often on dung) from woodland floors. Lepidopterists lose all sense of perspective in their company, setting up baits to lure the butterfly. (I encountered one man who actually defecated under an oak tree where the emperor had been spotted.)
One summer, I spent every spare hour in the woods “emperoring”, as the pastime is dubbed. Then it was hours that weren’t so spare. I missed a deadline. And another. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about a “grounding”, the term for when a butterfly descends. My heart pounded; my dreams turned purple.
I stopped going to the woods. It took every drop of willpower I possessed. I cooked; I took some moderate exercise. I tried to avoid the butterfly sightings posted online. The graph took a gentle decline, and stabilised. Previously, I might have rewarded myself with a splurge or a binge. Nature had something better in mind.
Later that week, my best friend messaged to say a purple emperor had landed in her open-top car. The chances of this happening were extraordinarily remote, and that it would still be there by the time I arrived, even slimmer still. But I raced to find her anyway. A pristine male purple emperor, lethargic in the blistering heat, waited in the footwell. He sat on my hand, drinking my sweat. We paused together, quiet and content.
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Claire Jackson is a journalist who writes about classical music, art and animals
