Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #72. Gornick, the Photographer that Heals

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 #72. Gornick, the photographer that heals

 

Gornick had been my patient for a year before he became a photographer working for those with heartaches and hurt in their past. He was a war veteran from the Gulf War and suffering from PTSD, which made him end up meeting me through the weekly therapy session in my office. The first time he stepped into my office, Gornick looked painfully uptight as if he had still been in the war zone, teetering on the brink of killing another enemy or being killed by them. His uneasy eyes were telling me to embrace his past and today instead of trawling into his pain as a psychiatrist. I still remember the days of our weekly talks, by which I came to find a penumbra of true human kindness and affection in Gornick’s heart.

 

(*picture source: clipart)

 

Each time Gornick tried to recollect and describe the moments of confronting the opponents in the war, his cheeks were a bit twitching in his deep thoughts. I kept saying how much Americans would appreciate his sacrificial life in the war zone, but Gornick was mad at my praise and admirations. He said “Dr. J, I was dispatched to help the country and destroy the enemy. I ended up decimating not only the enemy, but all the innocent people living there as well. My fellow comrade and I would say that we were totally hexed from the start of this war to kill. I am fighting in that war zone every night in my dream.” Even though I had been there to ease Gornick’s deep-rooted pain, I was not trying to backpedal on my thoughts about his selfless contribution as a brave soldier in someone else’s country. At some point of our weekly therapy sessions, he started to show me some of his photos taken from the war. In those pictures were Gornick’s exhausted eyes vaguely shown through the sand blast. I saw a lonely soul filled with a lot of sorrow, remorse, and guilt in his eyes, but Gornick felt himself like some kind of daring manticore that prey upon every life in sight during the war.

 

 

(*picture source: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Manticore?file=Manticore.jpg)

By the time we were about to wrap up our year-long therapy sessions, Gornick said he’d be working for a center of post-war trauma as a photographer who helps those veterans heal their wounds inside. Leaving my office, Gornick handed me his camera and asked me to take a picture of us together. I received a picture of me and Gornick enclosed in a small envelope in about a week or two since we said goodbye. The picture showed me my praise and admirations toward Gornick were not so out of line. There was not an embittered soldier guy in the picture anymore. I only saw a man who had learned how to spread his love and care for others with similar sorrow as his own in life.

 

(*picture source: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/09/23/plans-for-bigger-defense-budget-get-boost-after-house-authorization-bill-vote/)  

Expressions

    1.   PTSD: Short for “Post-traumatic stress disorder”, which is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event or disaster

 

2.   uptight: anxious or angry in a tense and overly controlled way

 

3.   to be teetering on the brink/edge of something: To be very close to doing something or of having some imminent event happen, especially that which is bad or disastrous

 

4.   to trawl into something: to sift through something as part of a search or to thoroughly investigate something

 

5.   penumbra:  a shaded region surrounding the dark central portion of a sunspot

 

6.   to twitch: to move or cause to move with a slight trembling 

 

7.   to decimate: to kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.

 

8.   to hex somebody/or to put a hex on somebody: to cast a spell/ to bewitch/ to curse somebody

 

9.   to backpedal on something: to reverse one's previous action or opinion

 

10.   manticore: a mythical beast typically depicted as having the body of a lion, the face of a man, and the sting of a scorpion