Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #30: Bernie, the Foodie

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 #30. Bernie, the Foodie

Bernie always looked wiped out and limp like a lifeless leaf dangling on its faded stem of the old plant in the corner of my barren office. His face had never gotten a hint of smile or a bit of hope. All he seemed to care in life was these few hours of candid face-to-face talks with me once a week. He always asked me if he could possibly break the spell of his addiction to food. Bernie was suffering from bulimia. Without his words, I could tell by the excoriated skin of his fingers, how long or how painful his eating disorder had been. The scarred and thickened skin on the back of his hand was like a scream from deep inside. Bernie was full of rage, loneliness, and self-pity.

The first thing Bernie said at our weekly session was simple and blunt. “Dr. J, I’m not here to get a psychological evaluation or some maven opinions from you. I just… I just need you to feel or at least understand what my feelings are like when I think of food.” Bernie had been franchising his bakery in this town and in some other major cities as well for 15 years.  Being a baker, he had captured the mysterious worlds of sweet treats and taste buds in greater details than any other patisserie chefs had ever tried. Even some people with a weird fear like turophobia eventually became hooked on his apple and cream cheese pies. The boxes he would bring to my office was full of colorful and flavorful sweet treats that I had not ever tasted in my life.

All his beautiful and mouth-watering cakes and buns displayed on the racks were a perfect disguise that covered his conflicts and rage inside since his father left his family when Bernie was twelve. Actually, both Bernie and I could not figure out which was the prior propellant for his depression. The irresistible sweet creations of his own was the trigger for his anxiety or the internal war inside of him was the cause of his constant crave for sweets in such a morbid way? Either way, Bernie was caught between the two contrasting worlds: the sweet culinary art and the bitter trap that won’t let go of him.

As our weekly meetings were coming to an end, Bernie seemed to be gradually figuring out what had made him binge-eat, get angry, and then come back for more sweets at his bakery. However, that nasty habitual cycle was not easily broken. Bernie was not convinced or drastically changed by my psychiatric spiel, but one thing that I knew for sure was that he came to terms with his love for sweet treats as a foodie, not as an obsessed patient suffering from bulimia. He was not pigging out what he created back in the kitchen anymore. He was sharing his sad childhood story not only with me, but at the local soup kitchen, while people were savoring his delectable cakes to the last crumb. Bernie was not being in the traumatized past anymore. He was finally in the moment with the sweetest bite that was and would be different from yesterday or tomorrow.

Expressions

   

   1.  wiped out: extremely tired or exhausted

   2.  barren: bleak and lifeless

   3.  excoriated: damaged/ removed on the surface of the skin

   4.  maven: expert

   5.   patisserie: a French bakery/ pastry shop

   6.  turophobia: the fear of cheese

   7.   prior propellent: an earlier/ preceding substance that causes something to move forwards.