Article July 22, 2013 Issue

I refused to choose insanity

Ginny Nilsen

One afternoon years ago, I was standing in my bedroom, facing a decision that would change my life. At the time, I felt as though a line—like what we might call a laser beam today—was running through my room. It went from wall to wall, and I was standing on one side of it. If I crossed over to the other side of the line, I felt that complete insanity awaited me.

Even though I was living with some Christian Science church friends, and had been studying Christian Science for about a year, I believed I would never know what consistent sanity and peace were like. I was still seeing myself as having a compulsive addiction, being immoral, a pathological liar, and an over-spender. Also, I always had some kind of physical pain.

For years, I had mulled over the thought that I had a multiple personality and did not know if there even was a “real” me. Medically, I had been diagnosed as manic-depressive, and I had already worked up a suicide plan that would look like an accident. At that moment in the bedroom, all I could think of was that accepting permanent insanity and life in a mental institution would put an end to my problems.