Dr.
Jedidiah’s Diary
Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling,
meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who
lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self
for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands
of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new
people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him
different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support
groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths
through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest
with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food
for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.
Episode # 12. Politically Correct Word
for my patient Tim
When
this teenaged boy named Tim was brought by his parents to my office, I wonder
what made this handsome young man have to be here, which obviously seemed like
it was never his own idea to visit a shrink. He was wearing a button-down
shirt, meticulously tucked in his ironed pants. Tim did not look like an
outgoing gadabout who hops from one
party to another with his druggie friends. Besides, he did not show a hint of
ADHD kind of problem either. Wait….maybe I had become way too accustomed to
seeing a lot of cases with teenaged patients having somewhat common problems
such as shoplifting, ADHD, substance abuse, bullying, traumatized by domestic
violence, promiscuity, autism…..and
you name it. Tim looked far from these common problems that I had witnessed. At
least from the outside or the surface of his attitude, I could hardly detect
any kind of issue, which was viewed as unhealthy or unsound by his parents,
with this fine young man.
Tim said
he had forcedly been in several different conversion therapy programs for
more than 5 years. Aside from the pointless time spent in the programs, what
had tortured Tim to the bone was his parents’ disapproval of his identity as a
homosexual. Tim kept asking me over and over again if it was sin or crime to be
punished or rectified for him to
naturally think about his male friends. At those conversion therapy programs, the
instructors -who were self-proclaimed messengers of God – always looked at him
and other people there with a painfully condescending attitude. Tim said it
made him sick to see the instructors standing with their arms akimbo and doing their perfunctory job of counselling and
reforming in that institute. Each time he visited me at my office, he
desperately said WHY he should feel unnerving and guilty about his inherent
identity. Tim went to say that whatever he was, he had been born that way,
….which, he says, might also have been God’s mistake, NOT his own, to say the
least. The “Why” had been imprinted on my mind until Tim’s parents decided to
end these meetings with me at my office.
I am
just a psychiatrist who happens to be straight, and not a human right activist
or an advocate of LGBTQ. One thing I
know for sure is that being homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual is not a
matter of choice to make. To my knowledge and the best of my belief, it is
predestined to become male or female not only on the outside but from the
inside as well. It is not something to be corrected or forced to be changed. As
a shrink, I understand how hard Tim must have been, trying to follow what his
parents want him to and show that he is normal in every way. Sadly, he had just
few people around who would confidently come up and say Tim is normal. To his
parents and the world around him, the word “homosexual” was not a neutral term
that describes who he is, but just a politically
correct word that insinuates Tim
is an outcast or deviation from accepted norms of our society.
I
still remember Tim’s sad eyes on our final session at my office.
Today,
we see many conferences and assembly of sexual minorities being held here and
there. Their street parades have continuously been criticized and frowned upon
by most as one big blatant event that’s even viewed as salacious in the perilous extreme. I hope soon they could be
accepted just the way they are, not as terminally ill patients, a wayward nonconformist, or crooked souls
in our society at all.
Expressions
1.
gadabout: (noun)
habitual pleasure-seeker/ a person who moves about restlessly or aimlessly,
esp. from one social activity to another.
2.
promiscuity:
(noun) The
term can carry a moral judgment if the social ideal for sexual activity is
monogamous relationships. A common example of behavior viewed as promiscuous by
many cultures is the one-night stand
3.
conversion
therapy programs: (noun) the pseudoscientific practice of
trying to change an individual's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual
to heterosexual using psychological or spiritual interventions
4.
to
rectify…: (verb) to set ….right/ to correct ………
5.
akimbo:
(adverb) to have the hands on the hips and the elbows bowed outward
6.
perfunctory:
(adjective) done routinely and with little interest or care or enthusiasm
7.
LGBTQ:
LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and either 'questioning'
or 'queer’
8.
to
insinuate that….: to impart or suggest in an artful or indirect
way; to imply…
9.
wayward:
(adjective) difficult or impossible to manage, control, or keep in order
10.
salacious:
(adjective) characterized by or indicating sexual desire; lustful: louche
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