Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary: My First Love

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 #17. My First Love

When Sarah came back to my life, I was enwrapped by two polarized feelings. Surprisingly happy and unbelievably sad. She was a totally different woman until she opened up her mouth to ask if she was still in my memory. The same old sweet voice that I remembered. There was a rail thin lady with haggard, sunken cheeks standing right in front of me that I could hardly ever recognize just by her hopelessly desperate eyes. That moment I ran into Sarah at the city event of Spring Festival was like the final harsh blow after all those years that had wildered me since she left for that vagabond named Riley.

Sarah was the only girl that held a special place in my heart when our love for acting was passionately kindled in the society “Act Right”. She was often criticized by our coach because of the way she camped. Coach used to say “Sarah, you’re always making it sound ‘pompous’ or ‘pretentious’. Just say like a beggar when you’re a beggar. Act like a loser when you are one. Your exaggerations tend to make you look kitschy in the play.” However, Sarah never seemed intimidated or dispirited by the coach. She was rather like “Beggars could sound like the pompous rich….I think.” Yes, she might be right, but did not meet the coach’s expectation at all. Not even agreed with my interpretation of her role in the play. It was not because the coach and I were pathetic OCDs, but because Sarah was not acting right that constant arguments were occurring in every practice.

Whether Sarah was hiding herself behind each unrealistically magnified colors or not, I found myself becoming more and more enchanted by her own contrived version of characters. I must have enjoyed wishing that I had discovered her true pictures and visions in life. We were seeing each other for three years in what I’d call ‘deep love’. By the time when I was able to confidently boast that I had made up my mind to spend the rest of my life with this fine young lady, Sarah switched up out of the blue. There came a newcomer to ‘Act Right’. He was Riley. Every time his name comes to my head, I still feel like throwing up. Even without my realizing, Riley stole Sarah’s heart, ….and just as might be expected of an actress who’s really good at playing her own versions of roles that no one could ever expected, Sarah left me for that new guy.

A year had passed so painfully since Riley joined the society. Sarah seemed so excited about the change in her life with Riley next to her: Overnight driving around the town, hopping from one watering hole to another, tasting all different kinds of liquor offered there, smoking,….and then something else that makes me shudder. I knew she stepped into a hell of a different side in her life, but just sat still, swallowing a bitter sneer.

Today was the happiest, but also saddest day of my life. The one that I luckily ran into at the local Spring festival was my first love, Sarah. She came back with the same old, sweet voice and smile. But her eyes filled with inexplicable or irreparable sorrow seemed to make it hard for me to bring up our precious old days being together. To me, she was truly my first love. To Sarah, maybe I will be her final love that would last through vicissitudes of all those lost years. Yes, I will probably be her love again… as long as she is truly what she is showing today.  

Expressions

   1.  to wilder…: to cause someone to lose one’s way/ to bewilder someone

   2.  to camp: to speak or behave in a coquettishly playful or extravagantly theatrical manner.

   3.  pretentious: making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious

   4.  kitschy: gaudy, ostentatious, vulgar, showy

   5.  contrived: phony/ false/ overdone

   6.   to switch up: to change state of mind or leave

   7.   watering hole: a bar, nightclub, restaurant with popular bar or other social gathering place where alcoholic drinks are sold.

   8.   a hell of a …: Used to emphasize the exaggeration of a noun to a positive extent. Other variations include: "one heck of a", "heck of a", or "hell of a …”

   9.   vicissitude: successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions, as of life or fortune; ups and downs