BY THE END of 1986, I had been episode-free for three years. I was working in the Acquisitions Department at The Johns Hopkins University library. According to the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, this job was a terrible fit for me. However, it was sufficient while I lived in the invisible box of my own creation. I inwardly repeated, If I can keep myself small, the illness can’t overtake me. I took my medication, taught Sunday School, sang in the choir, performed motivational skits at church, and spent time with family and friends.

One Friday in early December, I noticed my thoughts were speeding up, accompanied by a gnawing, fearful sensation in my gut. For the first time, I recognized I was beginning to cycle. I spoke privately to my supervisor and our department head, Bev, in her office. When I revealed my bipolar diagnosis, Bev empathized with me. One of her close friends suffered with bipolar disorder. She asked what we needed to do. I decided to take a bus home where I would rest. One of my work friends took my bank card and withdrew money from my account so I could get home. I was unsure about what I would do next.

That Sunday, the Sunday School Department was in charge of the evening service. I was so tired that I spent much of the service in a room above the sanctuary. During his remarks at the end of the service, the pastor jovially commented on the ratio of single sisters to single brothers in the congregation—probably six to one, if not more. Then he added, “And Brother X. won’t be single much longer.” Oh Lord, the pastor had just provided one of the necessary elements for my improvisational manias. That brother was planning to be married, but, of course, I was not his fiancée.

The following day, when I called Brother X. on the phone to ask a question—after all, in my mind, we were about to be married—he wisely suggested I pose my question to my father. I hung up, forgetting the question.

I had spent the morning studying the latest issue of Essence magazine. As a teen, pre-salvation, I had expected to grace that cover one day. The model on December’s cover was a young woman I knew from college. I took the magazine into the kitchen so my sister Ernestine could see this glowingly beautiful woman. After I finished gushing over the pictures, I relaxed in the living room, sipping the chamomile tea Ernestine made for me.

The next day, I went downtown and met a man who was selling beautiful leather bags at City Hall. I engaged him in scintillating conversation, which included my upcoming marriage to my imagined groom. Thinking and understanding through my hypomanic reverie, I convinced him I would be a profitable local distributor for his wares. After shaking hands on a business deal, I caught a cab home with ten handcrafted leather bags in my possession. I laid them out on my bed.

What did I do to deserve all of these beautiful bags? I asked myself. When Ernestine asked where I got all of those pocketbooks, I remembered some guy I met downtown had given them to me. I recalled he had said something about perceiving I was a “powerful woman.” I told her she could have one. She looked at me skeptically. I told her I was going around the corner to visit my friend Sue. Maybe she’d want to come over and pick out a bag. When I returned a couple of hours later, my sister informed me I had just missed the bag designer. He rethought his decision to commission me as his merchandiser. Ernestine gave him all the purses, except the red leather bag I had taken to Sue’s house. He was allowing me to keep that one. I now presume he figured out I was unstable after rethinking our interaction and decided he would be satisfied with recouping ninety percent of his loss.

That night, I walked to the apartments down the street to visit one of my sister’s friends for the first time. In his absence, I invited myself in to chat with his sister. I don’t remember how the visit devolved, but I ended up giving her a style lesson, changing in and out of the clothes in her closet. Taken aback by my behavior, she didn’t stop me. She was relieved when I left for home.

The following evening, I felt like going shopping. I had one dollar. I stopped at St. Ambrose and borrowed enough money from Father Henry to buy an all-day bus pass. I boarded the bus and traveled to the Lexington Lady store in Mondawmin Mall. They sold lovely clothes in my size, fourteen. I had the greatest time in the store that evening. The sales women enjoyed my effervescence. We chatted as I tried on one outfit after another. When it was checkout time, I had spent nearly one thousand dollars on clothing and a necklace, although I never wore any jewelry beside broaches. I explained to the clerk that the money to cover the check had been placed in the account by my father, a wealthy businessman. I assured her it would clear that night. Accepting this fantasy as truth, she accepted my check with the proper identification.

I collected my bags and left the store as it closed. I waved goodbye to the sales clerk as warmly as I would if separating from a close friend. Then I used my bus pass to catch a bus downtown.

Having no money, I walked around downtown for a couple of hours. By this time, it must have been eleven at night. As I sat on a bench, a young man approached. He sat down and engaged me in conversation. By this time, I was becoming quite agitated, not knowing how I would get home. As we talked, I revealed my sister Linda worked at a downtown dance club, The Power Plant. The young man told me to turn around and look at the building behind the bench. It was the place where my sister was working. He instructed me to go inside and find her. I followed his directions as if he was the angel Gabriel and I was Mary, the mother of Jesus, while he rose from the bench and walked away.

Linda was shocked when she saw me at her job. Sanctified Charita never hung out at dance clubs. In my dancing euphoria, I grabbed and broke Linda’s friend’s necklace. Humiliated, as her friends called me crazy, Linda took me back to our Finney Avenue home. Very tired, I went to bed and immediately fell asleep.

The next morning, Dorothy Hurst, the sister from Calvary who my mother called my church mother, arrived at my house with a couple other concerned church sisters. Apparently, the night before, when no one was sure of my whereabouts, a contingent of family and church members had driven through the city looking for me. After I dressed, as Sister Hurst instructed, they drove me to the Mount Pleasant clinic.

For the previous three years, I kept monthly psychiatry appointments, had my blood tested at prescribed intervals, endured twenty-four hour urine collection and visited a therapist I didn’t like. There was nothing particularly wrong with her; it was that I resented having to consult a therapist, period. And she never said anything I found meaningful. Then again, I never quite heard her because I was put off by what I perceived as a condescending manner. Bipolar or not, I found her tone intolerable.

When we arrived at the clinic, my friends explained my situation to the receptionist. We sat in the waiting area until my therapist called me into her office. Today, I chatted with her as I would with an old friend. “Your hair looks great! Have you done something different with it?” I asked, although it looked the same as always. Fortunately, Dorothy had accompanied me into her office to share the reality of my situation. After the doctor who was summoned spoke to me, the therapist informed us they were checking for an open bed on the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Finding no vacancies there, they found availability at Johns Hopkins Hospital at Wyman Park.

The therapist set up the transfer and my friends drove me to the psychiatric unit. Now that I had insurance, for the first time I was sent to a private hospital instead of a state facility.

My friends delivered me to the hospital safely, but were not allowed to remain with me. Later that day, my mom and Karen arrived to find a groggy, medicated Charita confined to a hospital room. I remember my mother commandeering my bankcard, checkbook, and ID. She asserted, “You won’t be needing these.” I thought, I guess they don’t trust me to be financially responsible. You write one bad check and they take your stuff.

During this hospitalization, I had many visitors, including my family and friends from church. Because the hospital was across the street from JHU, where I worked, several of my friends and coworkers visited as well. One of my friends brought her pastor to pray with me. A coworker, a practicing Jehovah’s Witness, discussed the Bible with me in what I saw as a good-hearted attempt to convert me. Overall, knowing people apart from my natural and church families knew about my condition was embarrassing.

My time at Wyman Park was more therapeutic than the state hospital stays had been, once I was medicated out of the mania. Clinicians discussed the illness and its prognosis with me. According to them, I should have been grateful for the three-year remission I had experienced . . .

To my surprise, for my birthday on December 15, the facility supplied a cake. I saved a piece for Brother X. Karen insisted, “He definitely won’t be visiting” and ate the cake herself.

I was left with nearly one thousand dollars’ worth of clothes, some worn, that I couldn’t afford. When I shared my plight with my pastor, he formulated a plan. He, Dorothy, and I took the clothes back to Lexington Lady, where Dorothy was a frequent shopper. While I waited in the store, they went in the back to the manager’s office and explained the shopping spree was a manifestation of bipolar mania. I felt humiliated by my out-of-control behavior, but was grateful that the store accepted every item purchased, leaving me with a zero balance. Thanks to my advocates’ insistence, the manager even wrote off the lost necklace I failed to return.

Because my illness was arrested before developing into the full-blown manias of 1980, 1982, and 1983, the ensuing depression did not last as long as it had in those years.

When I was released from the hospital, Sister Hurst insisted we collaborate on a short play, Is the Price Right? for the church luncheon in April. Incidentally, by this time, the ban on attending plays had been lifted. She was sure writing a play would lift my spirits. “Even if you don’t feel well enough to participate as an actress, writing the script will make you feel better,” she assured me. By April, I had recovered sufficiently to act in the vehicle I created.

By the end of January, or early February, I returned to work, taking a medicinal dose of lithium that was slightly lower than the toxic dose.