Dr.
Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and
exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife Demi 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
16. Larry’s Second Chance
The first thing that came to my mind when I first met
Larry was that we could build good friendship that I had hardly ever
experienced in the past of my life. Since I had been so focused on my patients,
who all had miserable mental problems, I’d had hard time showing my true self
to anyone, even if that anyone looked sincere and honest with me. I was
surrounded by an invisible wall for the purpose of self-defense and strong
determination to stay unaffected by my patients at my office. However, such a
strong resolution of mine was not indefatigable
at times. Larry was the very one that reached my mind, not as a patient but as
a friend. It was probably because of his unforgettable smile.
This smiley, mid-aged guy was discharged from the prison
through compassionate release due to
his illness. He said he was lucky enough to see a shrink thanks to the fund
collected by one of his juvie teachers’ help. The million-dollar smile on his
wrinkly face would make me confused about his nasty old days before his prison
sentence as a flimflam. He was
tossed out into the dark side as a child when his parents passed away due to
the accidental drug overdose. He became street savvy way too early, and had to
learn how dim his own prospects are without nurturing parents in a cozy little
place he could call home. Larry had been shuffled around from the juvie to
another shelter, which had left his life smeared
thick with pains of being stigmatized as an irreparable outcast. However,
quite surprisingly, he was always all smiles, not fake, but rather simple and
innocent. I remember asking him the same question over and over again,
especially after our official clinic session was over. “How come you have such
a big smile? I mean…how could you keep yourself intact from all the bad times
you’d gone through?” Sometimes Larry just smiled again, or at other times he
said “I just had no shoulders to cry on. I just had to smile."
Awkward silence filled the air like dark clouds while no words were
being exchanged between Larry and me. What he said before he left our final
session hit me like a thunderbolt out of nowhere. Exhaling a long, deep sigh,
Larry said “Nobody asked me why I destroyed my life as well as others’. Nobody ever
wanted to learn why I continued to deviate from my right way. Nobody cared what
I had been thinking in the absence of mom and dad.” He went on to say that
“Those I deceived were at least into what I talked them into. I felt I was
seen. I thought I was recognized.” Now that he got only a couple of months left
to live, he said he felt truly deeply sorry for those who sold out to his lies.
Larry taught me, no, changed me into someone who tries to
be a listener with a warm heart. I had been a corrector, not a care giver. All
I was focusing on was to give him a solution, not a sense of shared feelings. Maybe
I was unnoticeably enjoying some kind of frisson
of straightening him out all along.
I heard that Larry got married to a wonderful lady he met
at church a few years ago. Although he died of pancreatic cancer only after
half a year into his marriage, the news that he finally found the second chance
in life to meet someone who listened to him put a smile on my face. This smile
resembles Larry’s, I thought. I lost my beloved Demi, my one and only shoulder
to cry on, so I just… smile.
Expressions
1. indefatigable: incapable
of being fatigued/ untiring
2.
compassionate
release: policies designed to allow some of the dying prisoners to
be released from prison or jail before sentence completion
3. flimflam: a swindle/scam in which you
cheat at gambling or persuade a person to buy worthless property
4.
smeared
thick with…: (figuratively) one’s reputation has been
stained/ smudged by…
5.
frisson:
a
brief moment of emotional excitement/ thrill/shudder
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