UNLIKE DEPRESSIONS I had suffered, mania terrified me. The improvisational behavior I had recently exhibited lacked the control of classic theatrical improvisation. I was used to being directed by a brain that processed my actions before I performed them. While manic, I did whatever came next without making certain it was grounded in reality, and that was crazy. This was especially frightening for me because my self image was largely based on intellectual achievement and self-control. Other than Bishop Geddis, no one around me seemed to understand my symptoms as manifestations of an illness.

After I was forcibly medicated out of the unwelcome high, a doctor at CVH recommended I take lithium, a naturally occurring salt on the periodic table, in a concentrated dose to quell the mania. While considering his advice, I met a young woman at the hospital whose behavior seemed extremely erratic, even while taking lithium. Not knowing it takes time for the medication to work effectively, I decided lithium was not for me and refused the drug. Unfortunately, as a twenty-two-year-old adult in charge of my own medical decisions, I didn’t seek outside counsel. After fifteen days, when my mood stabilized, I was discharged with instructions to take a multi-vitamin. Two female workers at the facility admonished me, separately, not to come back to the facility, as if being at a looney farm was my choice.

After my refusal to be medicated, I left Connecticut Valley Hospital thinking I was probably insane but hoping the episodic mania had been an anomaly.

Penny picked me up from the institution and drove me to my apartment. When I met with Dr. Coughlin, who I hadn’t conferred with in person since my return to Wesleyan in 1978, she told me I needed another semester off to allow my mind to rest. That would put me a full year behind my entering class at Wesleyan. Not happy about being a slow finisher, I appeased myself with the assurance of returning to graduate with the class of 1982. Because I had packed up most of my things and stored them at my pastor’s house in December, I only had to take my clothing home. I left my books in storage, but never retrieved them, not remembering where they were. Through the years I’ve lost a variety of possessions during manias.

Penny drove me to the train station. As we said goodbye, she looked apprehensive. I was definitely not the bubbly woman she traveled cross-country with on the bus trip on which I read my Random House pocket dictionary recreationally. I assured her I would be back. At least, that was my hope.

Before going home, I called my pastor’s wife to apologize for the ways my manic behavior had disrupted the peace in her home. A couple of years later, she wrote me a note asking me to forgive her if any of her actions had caused my condition to worsen. She assured me that was never her intent.

When I arrived back home, I wrote in my journal, I am feeling so paralyzed that I have to force myself to do the simplest things, like getting up and getting dressed. My sister Valerie, who talks far less than I, called me everyday to make sure I had a conversation with somebody. Thanks to my six years of indoctrination by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, suicide was still off the table.

When I felt well enough to speak to someone outside my family, I called Dee Dee to relate what happened. Rather than speak by phone, she invited me to visit at her home in D.C. While there, I had a conference with Bishop Wilson, our organization’s overseer, at their church. I imagined Bishop Geddis had already recounted my story. Bishop Wilson sat at his desk, with me seated in a chair opposite him. Establishing eye contact with me, he questioned, “What happened, Daughter?” Emotionally exhausted, I related how thoughts sped up in my head after he dropped me off at school, and I eventually ended up committed to a psychiatric facility for fifteen days.

“I’m better now, not taking any medication,” I declared. After he listened to my tale of psychiatric imprisonment. I shared the conclusion I had reached for my future.

Feeling no Spirit-filled saint should go through what I just had, I decided studying theater was destroying me; it was my mammon. I reasoned that abandoning theater was my solution. Knowing Jesus said no one could serve God and mammon, I refused to be an idolater. Back then, unaware of my confusion, no one explained mammon was the Greek word for money.

Bishop Geddis discouraged worldly entertainment. He encouraged his flock to carefully monitor television viewing, referring to TV as “the one-eyed demon.”

Having thought this new teaching through, I concluded, “If you can’t go to movies and plays, and your TV viewing is limited, you certainly can’t pursue acting or directing, as you had planned.” So, wanting to be the best Christian possible, circa 1906, the spread of early Pentecostalism in the United States, I erroneously concluded God wanted me to forsake theater, the pursuit that had nourished my spirit.

Bishop Wilson listened, respecting my right to make my own life choice. I do not remember him saying yea or nay to my decision. At this time no one, including me, understood theater was the thing God sent into my life to nourish my soul. I decided that although it was a fine pursuit for a Catholic, I needed to embrace the sober mindedness befitting my Apostolic lifestyle. This was an erroneous and harmful conclusion. However, no one in my Pentecostal world possessed the wisdom and understanding necessary to assure me that theatrical pursuits nurtured me. I replaced theatrical nurturance with spiritual anesthesia.