Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #64: Who Are You, Bradley?

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