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
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 #64. Who are you, Bradley?
“You think you know me, Dr. J?” His question had made me lose
my sleep over it for years. Seeing Bradley for countless therapy sessions
in my office had not even given me a hint of audacity of hope. If my fellow
psychiatrists had seen me struggling in the middle of this labyrinth, they must
have considered all the excuses and hasty reasoning that I’d made myself for being
clueless about Bradley’s mental state to be no more than non-sequitur. However,
Bradley seemed like a total stranger to me each time we spent together either
in and out of my office.
It was the play theatre named ‘Jukebox’ where I first met
Bradley two Summers ago. Jukebox was a perfect place for me to estivate throughout
the summertime, especially when the scorching heat outside and stress from work
were killing me on a daily basis. Bradley’s roles had amazingly been acted out
by his inimical glare as the Phantom of the Opera, by the most friendly
but saddest smile on his face as Edward Scissorhands, and by the desperately
infuriated monologue of the Count of Monte Cristo throughout that season.
His hazel gray eyes had given me myriads of feelings, leading me with unfathomable
depth into the world he was living in each play.
One night after the curtain call, I visited Bradley’s own
backstage dressing room and happened to overhear a heated discussion from the inside.
“How dare you tell me to quit our baby, Brad!!! I thought you’d also want to become
a parent! You’re a pathetic downer!” “I’m not ready to be a father yet,
Linda! You should’ve been cautious or at least let me know that you were not
protected!” A mad woman, who played the heroin of that night, stormed out of the
dressing room yelling at him even before I had a chance to walk away. The space
through the open door looked like a painful crevice between Bradley and his
lady Linda. He saw me standing out there in the hallway like a mannequin and invited
me to his quiet space that was still filled with anger and despair left by
Linda. I asked for his autograph, and Bradley asked me to join him for a
nightcap. Without any personal information about me, he might just need
somebody who could be all ears to his anguish, anger, and anxiety in life.
(*Picture Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/well/mind/dissociative-identity-disorder-busy-inside.html)
Since that night, Bradley had been a regular patient in
my office. In each of the sessions we had, he brought a different issue or
problem to the table. One day, he said he’d feel miserable and terribly lonely off
stage inside the empty theater, which made him ask out Linda to be his woman
for life. But Bradley said he wasn’t dreaming of making a family with her at
all. He said he even wanted to kill Linda when she broke the news of her
pregnancy, but still deeply loved her. On another day of our meeting, Bradley
confided that he poisoned his old friend Tim he met in his high school acting
club to steal his title role. He said “Unfortunately, Tim survived. It should
have been me that played the role! He could never hold a candle to me as
an actor!” I could not believe my eyes when I saw Bradly telling me about that
dark episode in such a ferocious and excited tone. What puzzled me about this
guy is that he had been regularly visiting the local nursing care facilities
with a lot of presents and heartfelt greeting cards for the senior citizens
there, and holding an end-of-the-year party for the children of his fellow
actors and actresses. He said there were a lot of photo albums of these
children in his study. Then, what made him so mad when Linda told him she was
pregnant with his child?!!
Then came the last straw on camel’s back while I was trying
to find a way to help him with his unstable emotions. A guy named Roger called
me one day and arranged a lunch meeting with me to talk about his relationship with
Bradley. “Dr. J, I got your contact number from Brad, and he wanted me to meet
you. Well…Brad’s a bit hesitant to tell you more about him……especially his
private life. He is planning to take the reassignment therapy, including the
surgery next month. I mean…we’re getting married. He gave me a pair of balls
to visit you and tell everything about him and me, Dr. J. We are inviting our fellow
buddies from Proud Boys on our wedding.”, said Roger with the most awkward
giggle that I had ever seen. Although I knew Roger was finished his sentence, I
was not able to respond right away. I saw Roger’s car leaving the parking lot
from my office. His old Mustang was proudly wearing the Confederate flag. What
I saw there was totally contradictory to what I had known of Bradley. He frequently
said he hated racism and always sounded supportive of BIPOC. We even
took part in the marching of anti-racism together last February.
I found myself stuck in this ravelment of
confusion and complexity about the actor Bradley and even wished to butt out
of his life. Looking down at the card of Bradley and Roger’s wedding invitation
in my hand, I said to myself ‘who are you, Bradley?’
Expressions
1. to lose
one’s sleep over something : to worry about (something) so much
that one cannot sleep —usually used in negative statements
2. non-sequitur:
(Latin origin) a statement (such as a response) that does not follow logically
from or is not clearly related to anything previously said
3. to
estivate: to spend the summer usually at one place
4. inimical: unfriendly
or hostile
5. (Debbie)
downer: someone or something depressing, disagreeable, or
unsatisfactory
6. a nightcap: a
usually alcoholic drink taken at the end of the day
7. cannot
hold a candle (or a stick) to someone or something: can't
hold a candle to means to not be as good as something or someone else, to be
less skillful or otherwise unfit when compared to something or someone else
8. a pair of balls to do something: vulgar slang meaning ‘to start acting in a strong, confident, and/or courageous manner, especially after having previously failed to do so’
9. Proud Boys: (source of this definition: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys) Established in the midst of the 2016 presidential election by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys are self-described “Western chauvinists” who adamantly deny any connection to the racist “alt-right.” They insist they are simply a fraternal group spreading an “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” agenda.
10. BIPOC: acronym standing
for “Black and Indigenous people
of color”
11. ravelment: entanglement/
complication
12. to butt out: to
stop being involved in something
