The many sides of mania

I'm going to tell you the story of the "Magical Stone Soup."

Three soldiers were going on an expedition when they came across a village. They were running low on food and asked the villagers if they had any food to spare. No one had enough to share, only enough to provide for themselves. Finally at the end of the day, the three soldiers hadn't gotten any food and decided to try again tomorrow. But one soldier got an idea and told the others to gather up everyone in the village and tell them to bring their food. He said that he was going to look for a giant pot. Confused, his soldier friends had no other option but to do what they were asked.


When the two soldiers had gathered everyone in the village square, the first soldier had come back with a giant pot. He gathered everyone around him and spoke to the crowd. "I have with me a magical stone that allows us to create a magical soup that can feed everyone in the village for a whole year! All it requires are some ingredients from each of you." One person stepped forward and added his food to the pot, then another and another and soon everyone had placed their food into the pot along with the soldier's magic rock. When the soup was finished, there was enough of the soup to go around to feed everyone and the soldiers for a full year, just like he said. A grand feast was held and everyone enjoyed the soup they had made. The next day, the soldiers left with full bellies and some extra soup to bring along with them.

They then had a debate with the Aztecs over what crackers to use.

I remember hearing this story as a child, and now that I reflect back on it as an adult, I suppose you could make out the story as a way to make something from nothing like I stated in my previous post. But this doesn't apply to me in two ways:

1. I am not trying to teach children about communal sharing.

2. I don't like soup. Period.

However, I should take a step off my high horse and let the metaphor of the stone soup apply to me for this blog post. Like I said before, I have no sense of self, much like a child growing up in the developmental phases of life. In order to grow, a child is affected by outside stigma, such as people, animals and other things. Since I was home alone a majority of the time, I would always watch cartoons about super heroes and funny talking animals. And from this, I tried to emulate their greatness, but at the time I didn't have access to a rubber bodysuit or a special effects budget. But what I did learn from cartoons is to be the funny guy who makes people laugh. After all, the best way to make friends is to get them to laugh at your jokes.

Homer Simpson is still my childhood hero.

And yet it turns out that people weren't laughing with me, they were laughing at me. Children can be so cruel sometimes. I continued trying to be the class clown, but it wasn't working and I would continually delude myself into thinking I was funny. But underneath the caked on layers of clown make-up, I was still a sad little boy. Pathetic really, but I digress. And here I thought that laughter was the best medicine. I guess that's why my grandparents died of cancer.

Thank you Rainer.

  

So I tried my best to keep up the charade through elementary school, but by the time I got out of there, I was slowly starting to become insane and clinically depressed. It was a difficult time, as is with most children, but to compound it with the beginning of a life long battle with chronic depression made things really hectic. And so I became that awkward recluse kid in junior high. I tried to break out of my shell, but as it turns out, my mental capacity was not up to par with the other teenagers at school. I was still a child, but in a grown up body. It didn't last long, as I ended up running into some serious trouble when I was in junior high, so much so, that I might not have been able to make it out alive.

As to what happened? Well, that will have to wait until next time. In the meantime, you can all guess as to what happened in the comments down below.

Cheers,

Cameron

P.S. I know I'm not the best writer out there, but the fact that I'm writing this therapy blog is helping me figure out small things about me that I might have forgotten about me and it's good to get stuff on paper. I just wanted to thank all of you guys for following me and making comments, even though we are getting graded on this :P