State of the unstable

If you know me, I'm big on choices.
I believe that you always have a choice. Not to say that it's a balanced choice, an easy choice, or a big choice, but one nonetheless. Even in the crappiest of situations, you have choices.
When facing the guillotine, you have choices. Your top pick, to get the frack outta dodge may not be one of them, but you still have options that you and only you can exercise. They don't seem like important ones, but any choice, even the smallest, is important.

I saw some thing on facebook earlier that got me thinking. It was one of those dumb things that has some bit of "wisdom" that gets shared and shared and passed around but is really just somebody's...whatever...spreading and taking hold amongst the masses who don't know how to make sense of things on their own.
Anyway.
It said "Cheating is a choice not a mistake".

Well, yeah. And no.

Of course, I'm not necessarily referring to cheating here. Cheating, in whatever sense you take it. I'm referring to the choice.

Each of us make choices. Choosing one option over an other. Choosing one option over none. Choosing nothing over anything else.
I'm thinking about choices in mental illness.
When mental illness takes over your brain, it does...just that. It takes over your brain. It takes away so many choices.
So many ...
We're still left with many, though they're certainly not as expansive. They don't usually have much of a range. It's not 'Go to law school or go to med school'. It's more like, especially when in the throes of mania, 'Run the Boston marathon tomorrow without ever having trained and buy a hotel just so you can have a choice of beds to sleep in each night or run the Boston marathon tomorrow without ever having trained and then buy 2 hotels just so you have even more of a choice of beds to sleep in each night'.
See what I mean?
There's still a choice, it's just not exactly one that covers as much ground.
When you're in the depths of depression, it's like 'Roll over and cover your head with the blankets' or 'Don't waste the energy that you don't have on something that won't make any difference anyway'.
Nowhere within either one of those scenarios is there an actual rational choice much less the ability to handle it were it actually there.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not excusing behaviors. I'm just trying to shed a little light on them.

Choice is a funny thing and must always be taken in context.
Especially...when it's not funny.