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 # 26. Hold the Line and Save Me
There is one thing that I have always made sure to do
every month: Taking 10 percent out of my monthly income as a psychiatrist to
fund the suicide prevention hotline program. It has been the least thing I
could do to feel less guilty as a husband who lost his beloved wife to
loneliness and liquor. Each time I had a meeting with the hotline counselors, I
felt that I was looking for a time of redemption and atonement, which I
had never been able to find in church.
It was not an adventitious opportunity for Amy to
work as a counselor for suicidal or at-risk people out there. She
herself had been reeling from the painful loss of her one and only kid
and struggling to wiggle out of the unfathomable slough of despair
since her teenaged daughter took her own life. For five years into her life as
a single mother, she had thought everything seemed to be going like
clockwork even though her daughter Chelsea was not as chatty as before. She
tried to take Chelsea everywhere filled with fun like museums, theme parks,
libraries, theatres, beautiful woods, seaside carnivals, shopping malls,
concerts,….and so forth. With all those times spent with her precious daughter that
seemingly did not have a room for gloominess, Amy was gradually coming to feel
contented and even forgetting there was no daddy for Chelsea at home. She just thought
there was no need to be swashbuckling adventures for her daughter not to
feel deprived of fatherly love. I believe she was right, but Amy wasn’t able to
picture in her mind one big thing that was missing in Chelsea’s lonely days. Amy
must have wished to talk with mom about her late father. She was too young to
understand the whole situation in which her dad had writhed himself in pain and
ended up killing himself without caring about his wife and daughter. Each time
Chelsea asked mom about why her dad should leave them like that, Amy thought of
every possible way to avoid the subject and kept trying to distract Chelsea. But
Chelsea wanted to welcome the moment of remembering and sharing the memories
with her dad, even if it would make it harder to carry on. Years and years of
getting the runaround from mom has made Chelsea close the door both to
the inside and out. To this lonely girl, there was no such thing as warmth of sipping
hot chocolate lying on mom’s lap next to the fireplace. Mom was trying to chase
out all the putrid smell of bad memories from the days with her husband,
but Chelsea had not been ready to let it all go. And one day left her mom just like
her dad did.
Amy was my patient in the darkest phase of her life after
having lost two closest people to her. Until the final session, I had not been
able to reach any significant conclusion of my counselling for Amy. My final
question for her might have sounded off-key. “Amy, what would bring you back to
your old self? I mean….back to your meaningful days…” I thought it was THE MOST stupid question in
the world for psychiatrists could ever ask their patients, especially in their
final meeting.
When I came to learn that Amy had become a counselor on the
suicide prevention hotline program, I found the answer to my own question that
had puzzled and fazed me all those years as a negligent husband who had not ever
paid attention to his wife’s roar inside. It was the moment that I saw small
embers of hope glinting inside of me like a droplet of morning dew dangling on
the gossamer. Sharing my pain and others’ agony with one another could
save not only those in need but also forgive myself as well.
Expressions
1. atonement: reparation
or expiation for sin
2.
adventitious: happening
or carried on according to chance rather than design or inherent nature
3. at-risk
people: people who are exposed to harm or danger
4. to
reel from…: to feel very confused or shocked and struggle/
lose one’s balance and stagger
5. to
wiggle out of….: to get out of/ squirm out of something or
some situation
6. slough:
a
swamp or a condition of despair or helplessness
7. to
go like clockwork: to do…. with perfect regularity or precision
8. swashbuckling:
swaggering
or behaving in a brave and exciting way like a fighter in the past
9. to
get the runaround: to get deceptive or delaying action especially
in responds to a request
10.
putrid: decaying
or rotting/ emitting a fetid smell
11.
gossamer: a
film of cobwebs floating in air in calm clear weather
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