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
#67. Sue, the Wife of a Minister
When I was invited to Sue’s
place, I had to ask myself if I’d go there as her shrink or just as her casual
buddy she called the ‘weekend racquetball partner’. In the racquetball court,
she was the most energetic and elated person in the whole world, but on
our way out when the game was over, I was with a total stranger who seemed painfully
quiet and gloomy. I felt nothing could ever lift her up from her deep sadness
that I was not able to fathom. Each time I asked if she was alright, Sue told
me that she constantly heard some voice in her head throughout a day, and
sometimes even in her dreams at night the voice was so loud that she could not
stay asleep. She thought that I could save her from this never-ending
tohubohu in her head, but it was almost impossible to penetrate the strong integument
of her self-defense without knowing what happened in her past.
Sue’s house was located in a
quiet and secluded area in the outskirts, shut off from hustle and bustle of
town. She said she’d been living by herself in this place for two years, hoping
for peaceful days away from her ex husband Nick. She went on to say two years
had flown by since she left Nick. “Just to forget about my memories with Nick,
I have tried everything from cooking, playing racquetball, taking guitar
lessons, gardening, traveling…. but still feel as if I were trapped in the
house of my ex husband’s secrets. So painful. How could I get out of his loud
voice that freezes me up in fear?”
As a wife of the respectable
minister of a small church, Sue was leading a picture perfect life that left
nothing to be desired on the outside. Her husband was always soft-spoken,
kind, and thoughtful to everybody in their community and church. His parents in
Indonesia were also warmhearted people. It was about a year into her marriage when
she heard something weird from a couple of church ladies at the donut social
after the morning chapel. They cautiously asked Sue about the small room the minister
would often call hegira in the
back of the church. Since Sue was enjoying her life as a newlywed bride, she
was so impervious to all the details and background history of the
church. One of the church ladies said “Why does your husband, our minister of
this church of God, call that small room by Islamic word ‘hegira’?” While I was
trying to search for any right answer to her question, she said another
unbelievable thing about Nick. Quite a few teen-aged girls did bible study in
the room and then got their fingers slit by the minister for the purpose of
collecting their sacred blood to be cherished.
All she heard was well above
Sue’s head, which made her speechless at the social. That night, Sue bombarded Nick
with a lot of questions about the mysterious room he’d call hegira in the
church and what had been happening in that space. Nick became furious and said “How
dare you accuse me as a pedophile or something! I haven’t hurt the kids but
only asked them to share a drop of their blood to be cherished for the prosperity
of our church. ….and why do I call the room hegira? Since my parents were
Muslims, they used to call our small house ‘hegira’, the truly sacred and holy
journey to peace. I wanted to pray for genuine escape from the evil in this
world with the sacred blood in that room. Now you understand, Sue?” After
months and months of major blow-ups with Nick, Sue reported what she had heard
to the police and walked away from him.
Pouring her favorite red wine into
a shiny glass for me, Sue seemed strongly determined to bid permanent farewell
to her bitter past with that crazy minister Nick. “Dr. J, you might think that
I was so blind and oblivious to my surroundings back then. Yes, you’re right. I
was lonely enough to fall in love with a man of insanity, but thanks to the brave
church ladies and my own Satori moment, I was able to run away from it
all. But I still hear Nick’s loud voice and yelling in my head now and then. It
is just like elusive and natant particles hard to catch on my mind. Even
in her quiet pergola that’s hundred miles away from her evil ex, Sue was
still suffering, and the mournful tunes from her old turntable resembled the saudade
welling up in her as a newlywed wife of a minister.
Expressions
1.
elated:
absolutely excited or delighted/ to be over the moon/ thrilled or exhilarated
2.
tohubohu:
disorder/ chaos
3.
integument: shell/
skin/ rind/ any covering/ coating/ enclosure
4. on the outside: on the surface (used for talking about the way that someone or something seems to people, when this does not show what they are really like)
5.
a social: an informal social gathering,
especially one organized by the members of a particular club or group.
6.
hegira or hejira: a
journey especially when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation : exodus.
7.
impervious
to …
: unable to be affected by….
8.
satori: sudden
enlightenment/ awakening
9.
natant:
floating/ swimming
10.
pergola: an archway in a garden or park
consisting of a framework covered with trained climbing or trailing plants.
11. saudade: a feeling of
longing, melancholy, or nostalgia
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