On that edge

Recently watched the film, Girl Interupted. It definitely made me think. What is mental illness? Is it always a chemical thing or can it sometimes be a choice, to hide from what scares you in the world? Can mental health be a coping mechanism that just goes wrong? All of us seem to have something that we do that is not mentally healthy all the time...some of us drink when we're unhappy, some of us smoke to deal with stress, some have to have things in just the right place in order to deal with, well, disorder. Perhaps mental illness is just pushing those to the extreme. Perhaps we all fall on some sort of continuum and there's just a line that we place as a society that makes some of us 'normal' and others of us 'unhealthy'. Who decides this line? And what do you do that falls closer to the unhealthy part of the continuum? If something went wrong in your life, how would you react? I think having healthy coping mechanisms is something we should all be taught at a very young age - stress reduction, exercise, talking to someone about what's going on...so much better than turning to food, or turning away from it...so much better than hurting yourself to express your pain...so much better than taking in substances which actually stress your body even if you feel like it cuts down on the pain. I think I needed that reminder that I can handle stress in healthy ways. And that the edge between 'normal' and 'unhealthy' is not where I want to head.