I've been reading again, and I'm excited. 7 books since about April I think. That's a book a week for me. Granted they're small paperbacks that I can keep in my purse, but still a book a week is good for me.

Finally made myself finish "Silas Mariner" by George Elliot. That book made me cry. I think I'm going to end up like poor old Silas Mariner one day, with no Eppie to rescue me. Sad, sad, sad!!! The ending of the book made me cry, but it's TOM time so my mones are raging. There were a couple of chapters I just skimmed because they were just dialogue, and it was hard to get through, but other than that Miss Elliot made some very good observations about life in her book.

Now I'm reading this book about a mentally ill patient's journey from insanity to sanity, called "I never promised you a rose garden". The book has reaffirmed what I've always believed, that mental illness is a defense mechanism that the brain uses to survive reality. The human body is built to survive. So if you're in a seemingly threatening situation that your mind can't handle, your mind will do things to enable you to keep going. What we call mental illness is just one of those defense mechanisms that the mind creates in order to help the body to survive traumatic events. Some events are so traumatic and scary to some people that if they didn't find a way to mentally escape, they would literally collapse and die. And yes sometimes they do, but most times a mental illness just develops.

You know how there's "fight or flight" syndrome. Mental illness is the extreme of "flight". Your mind literally collapses in on itself to flee, and creates worlds for the person to survive in, creates people to help the person survive. Of course they're all in the person's head, made up and not real, but the affected person doesn't know that.

I'm reading this book and wondering if I'm crazy, if there aren't places or things I've made up in my head to shield myself from a harsher reality. I had this same kind of feeling when I finished watching "A Beautiful Mind". I wondered for awhile if the people I knew were real or made up. Russell Crowe's character figured out that the imaginary people don't age, even when you do. But everyone I know has aged even quicker than I have, so I guess this must mean I really don't have an imaginary friend.