THE NEXT DAY, Monday, December 22, 1980, I had a train to catch. It was exactly one week after my twenty-first birthday. That day, I had called Mama to thank her for being a terrifically supportive mother. Since returning from my trip to Massachusetts, my speech had become schmaltzy and even slightly maudlin. I outdid myself as I praised her.

When one of the brothers arrived to drive me to the train, I was not ready, having unnecessarily pulled things from my suitcase. I grabbed the sack of presents I bought for my siblings—new bibles—along with the suitcase I hurriedly repacked. By the time we arrived at the Berlin station, the train was pulling away. My driver told me not to worry, he was going to drive to the next station. I would catch that train home. Grabbing the steering wheel, he sped away from the station with the determination of a NASCAR driver. We arrived in Meriden just before the train pulled up and I was able to board safely. My escort was visibly relieved.

Having missed breakfast, I went to the café car to purchase a hot ham and cheese sandwich. For the holidays, I supposed, there were cute little baskets filled with meats, cheeses and crackers available. I bought one along with my sandwich, chips, and Sprite. I returned to my seat to eat my meal. What will I do with the snacks in this basket? I wondered. I decided to pass them out to strangers seated in my railcar. I had to say something as I proffered each treat. In the holiday spirit, I settled on, “If you meet me and forget me you have lost nothing. If you meet Jesus and forget him, you have lost everything.” I had seen it written on a card. People looked at me quizzically, but smiled and accepted the snacks, anyway. As I made my way through the car, I was assisted by a six-year-old girl who asked permission from her mother. She held the basket from which I pulled the gifts.

Proud of my ability to spread cheer, I returned to the café car for another basket of snacks. The little girl wanted to help me again. This time, her mother refused her request, having processed the erratic quality of my behavior. They got off the train in New York. For the rest of the trip home, I chatted with an older African-American gentleman who was traveling to Washington, D.C. for the holiday. I changed seats to sit next to him after spying him in the car. Noticing the point on my pencil was broken, I challenged him to sharpen it without a pencil sharpener. He did it using a pen knife.

I took a cab home from the train station and spent several days with my family before returning to New Britain. Although my brain has blocked my memory of that visit, I remember my behavior being erratic. Many years later, I asked Mama how she had allowed me to return to Connecticut in such an exaggerated mood. She remembered asking me to remain in Baltimore, but she believed, as an adult, I was free to make my own decisions.

I returned to New Britain in a clearly hypomanic state. At the time, the people I was around had no understanding of my behavior. They were surprised my family allowed me to return. I arrived in the evening. After twenty-four hours at her house, my pastor’s wife confronted me. My behavior was scaring her. She told me, “I am not going to allow you to disrupt my household.” I told her I would leave.

My pastor, who I had never seen come upstairs in my many overnight stays at their home, came upstairs to calm me. All I retained from his admonition was the scripture, “A man’s gift will make room for him and bring him before great men.”

Adamant about leaving, I convinced one of the brothers from church to drive me to Leslie’s house in Middletown. She was surprised to see me. Good friends in our early Wesleyan years, we had very little contact since my New Born transition. This was my first visit to this residence. I am not sure how I knew where she lived. When I arrived, she had me sit down at her kitchen table and made me a cup of hot tea. Calm, balanced Leslie appeared troubled by my exaggerated, irritable mood. Her mother, Mrs. Jones, a psychologist, sat with us in the kitchen. She was visiting her daughter for the holidays.

The next thing I remember is being in the emergency room at Middlesex Memorial Hospital in Middletown. Then my father arrived. He later told me he believed someone from the University called with details of my location. He arrived by train, planning to take me home. When he came into the room, I was telling him how I had found Hemingway’s clean, well-lighted place, insisting he concur. I also shared I was engaged to one of Penny’s brothers. Not so. He and I had a discussion about the Quran just before Christmas, making him as good a candidate as any for the boyfriend/husband role, a staple in my manic improvisations. A doctor talked to me and tested my reflexes in my father’s presence. I had become physically stronger than usual and was very energetic, nearly bouncing around the examining room where I had been corralled.

My father petitioned the doctor to sedate me enough for him to get me home. The psychiatrist informed my dad I was suffering with manic-depression, now termed bipolar disorder. I was too sick to travel. In my mental state, I posed a threat to myself and others. Two doctors would be signing me into the state psychiatric facility for observation and treatment. My father was powerless; there was nothing he could do.

Meanwhile, back in New Britain, Pastor Geddis, chaplain at New Britain General Hospital, secured a bed for me at that facility. Penny remained in New Britain, awaiting my arrival. She called Leslie and relayed this information so she could pass it along to my father. I pieced the commitment debacle together over the years based on Penny’s and Daddy’s recollections. My dad, who later expressed being disappointed by Penny’s absence in Middletown, never saw Leslie, only her mother. I doubt Mrs. Jones knew anything about the New Britain hospital arrangement.

My dad remembers a Mrs. Olson, who talked soothingly to him and got him some milk to drink as he waited for his baby to be transported to the psychiatric institution. He was unable to summon the calm he had exhibited when my grandmother was ill. He returned to Baltimore the following day. Alone. Maybe things would have been different had I gone to New Britain General Hospital.

I was given an injection of Haldol to sedate me for my trip to Connecticut Valley Hospital, formerly Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane. Wesleyan students knew it as CVH. Though it was the other beautiful campus in Middletown, nobody wished to end up there. When I awakened at CVH, I was lying straitjacketed on a table in a pool of my own urine. When I gained consciousness earlier, I had fought the techs and needed to be restrained. I was restrained again the following day when my fight reflex kicked in again as a nurse tried to administer a Haldol injection by needle. This second time, I retained control of my bladder. For the next several days, refusing to take medicine by mouth, I was held down and given injections in my buttocks. I finally relented and received medication orally.

Hearing of my whereabouts, my former roommate Michelle traveled to the hospital from New York. Her mother was a nurse, but I do not know how she recognized I was experiencing a negative reaction to Navane, the psychotropic medicine being administered to me. I was having difficulty speaking and I was drooling. In her characteristically authoritative manner, she told the nurse that administration of the drug Navane would need to be discontinued. The doctor stopped the medicine at her insistence. The hospital staff had seemed oblivious to the side effects the drug caused.

One of the social workers at CVH identified herself as an Apostolic minister. When I had become calmer, she would sometimes take me to wards where she was assigned. I’m certain she was praying for me.

Penny visited every day but one, when it was bitterly cold. My pastor and several of the saints visited as well. Unlike many other fundamentalists living in the United States in the early 1980s, Bishop Geddis saw bipolar disorder as an illness, not a demon that needed to be cast out. Before I went back to Baltimore after the CVH commitment, Bishop Geddis had reasoned, “This is an illness that needs to be treated. If you had a toothache, you would go to a dentist, wouldn’t you?” His encouragement did not erase my personal shame. I secretly categorized myself as crazy, but it was mildly comforting to know someone I respected did not.

THE SECOND WEEK of my commitment, when I was coming down from my unwelcomed high, I remember being allowed to walk alone outside in the afternoons. I would repeat Isaiah 40:31 to myself: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.” I had to believe God was going to release me from this waking nightmare.

Penny wrote me a letter during my confinement that included the line, “Come on back to reality, Ri.” Eventually, with divine assistance, I did.