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 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 #76. The Stain in My Heart
The words that Judith said in our final therapy session
still linger on in the back of my mind after over 5 years. “You’re part of the cabal!”
What she said on our last meeting whacked me so hard that I wasn’t even
able to respond or look her straight in the eye. I was just sitting right there
in my armchair like the most incompetent nebbish in the world. As a
shrink, it was baffling to admit that I hadn’t been thoroughly seeing
through her feelings, but rather gravitating towards her family’s perspectives.
Since Judith’s parents had been both tight with the pastor of the church I’d trust
for a long time, what she said about her bad experience related to the pastor did
not resonate with me as much as her parents’ explanations did in my clinic. Flipping
through her charts in my patient file, I keep saying to myself ‘Shame on me.’
Judith was a quiet eighteen-year-old girl at our local Presbyterian
church. She was an ardent quire member who never skipped practicing or scampered
away from the post chapel cleaning every Sunday. Everyone at the church,
young and old, would think highly of her and say that she’d be the last girl
that straggles or crosses the line of any kind. However, people have a lag
period in life. Yes, that happens to anyone. Even to this girl that seemed
perfect in every aspect, there was an unforeseen secret, which should have been
revealed to us all before it was too late.
Judith’s parents asked me to consult their daughter one
day after almost half a year of her absence at the church. I wasn’t able to
recognize Judith when she showed up at my office, which was telling me how
reluctant she had been to belong to the church. There was no more hint of bright
smile or joyful youth detected in her face like before, but only the dark,
wilting shadows of hope were to be seen as if it could never resurrect from the
dirty, unguinous swamp of lies formed around her. She had trouble
telling me the hard-to-imagine secret for many days of our sessions, but when
she finally talked about it, I could not believe my ears.
Before Judith’s parents brought their daughter to my
office, they’d repetitively tell me about Judith’s weird behavior such as
skipping church quire practices, refusing to go to church, yelling at them, and
even seemingly indulging in illegal substances she might have obtained from her
miscreant friends. Her parents did not ever wish to accuse their respectable
reverend of committing sexually abusive acts, even if it had been done to their
own precious daughter. The church people who happened to hear through the
grapevines about Judith’s dark experience with the reverend and they started to
create and spread Judith’s misconduct outside the church and school. I did not
want to believe what they said about Judith, but felt somewhat disloyal
speaking ill of our beloved pastor, too. Judith’s words gave me the penetrating
fact that I was one of those pathetic cabal. Looking back on those shameful
days of my own, I’ve been painfully trying to remind myself to be more persnickety
about what I see, hear, and discuss through an imaginary tesseract of
my patients’ situations. My irrevocable failure in saving Judith was one of the
most regretful incidents in my clinical history begotten by my blind faith in
the reverend and painfully two-dimensional approach to the case.
Expressions
1. cabal: a
secret plot, or a small group of people who create such a plot
2. to
whack: to hit vigorously
3.
nebbish:
(Yiddish) a meek and timid person can be called a nebbish who is, for instance,
too scared to speak up when someone cuts in front of you as you wait in line
for a movie, your date might call you a nebbish
4. baffling: completely
confusing or mysterious
5.
to scamper away: to
move/ run away in a hurry
6.
to straggle: to
wander in an indirect, disorderly, meandering way
7. a
lag period: an inactive/ dormant period of time
8. unguinous: greasy/
oil-like
9. miscreant: a
person who behaves badly or in a way that breaks the law.
10. persnickety (about something):
11. tesseract: the
four-dimensional analogue of a cube
