One day, I’m going to move to Southern California and become a Buddhist! As these words hung in the air, I was overwhelmed by the urge to take them back, but it was too late.

My bold declaration had left my graduate school classmate, Nicole, with a look that was hard to read at first, but I concluded that she was about to alert the authorities, and they were coming to take me to the psychiatric hospital—a place that was unfortunately all too familiar to me. After 12 such hospitalizations, and a bipolar diagnosis, I was always on high alert. I had to be.

Yet, there I was, having put enough of the pieces of my life back together to go to Columbia University and get my master’s in

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