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 # 90. Sophie’s dark blue blouse
Since the very first day of our coming to know each
other, Sophie had never admitted that she needed some help either by staying at
rehabilitation center or consulting a shrink. She was a smart-looking person
that I met at the monthly ice cream social of my residential community. The
old man Ben living next door came up to me and tipped me off
about the woman walking towards us. “Uh-oh…beware that lady in that perse
hued blouse. She’s nobody to sneeze at. Obnoxiously self-opinionated and
moody.”, said in a very low whisper, looking the other way. I tried to erase Ben’s
words from my mind as I saw Sophie coming near me with a soft smile on her
face. It was easy for me to avoid prejudice about anyone before I came to learn
about them, because that’d been the attitude or skills that I had to hone as a
professional psychiatrist for all those years. Sophie said “Hi! I heard from
Ben that you are a doctor who takes care of sick mind or hurt souls. Hope you
are not practicing your philosophy of reading people’s mind here in our neighborhood.
This is just an ice cream social, right?” Ben’s words about this beautiful
woman seemed so untrue and even felt likes some groundless remarks made with
malice aforethought. I found myself so pleased to know that Sophie was
living in my neighborhood.
Sophie was born in an upper crust family in Paris. She said
her parents were a so-called intelligent socialite couple whose days and nights
were filled with gens du monde. Each time I asked her about her youth
and school days in her home country, her eyes turned sad and lifeless. She
wanted to hold her loving cat and sing out loud at the family reunion in the
woods, head outside for a long walk in the midst of a Summer downpour, basking
in the Sun on the endless white sand of the island Lido in Italy some day, living cottagecore,
not care at all about how others think of her, dance all night long like a
lunatic, make a hoary old joke without worrying about being frowned upon…but
none of which was allowed in her family of dignity. Being suffocated and exhausted
among the people who would be beside themselves with worries about Sophie’s
liberal way of thinking, she made up her mind to leave for a new country. She
was happy, but unfortunately not able to let herself live by her free will. All
the discipline and criticism from her childhood had already been deeply rooted
in her mind, making it hard for her to find the way out of the maze. Friends
she made here in this country were not quite ready to understand her background.
They called her stuck-up, strict, and way too moody. Her sleepless nights
became her lonely pieces of poems.
“Who is loving this person with a bright smile that is wizened
tomorrow?
Who is a veracious
friend that shows true blue love?
Who is an ailurophile
like me?
Who is it that
never tries to whitewash his ugly past?
Who is it that wouldn’t
lambast this coward’s mistakes in life?
Who is willing to
tell me that I am perfectly alright and don’t need barbiturate to sleep at night?
Who is going to
hold my hand and not let it go?”
Her little piece of poem she read at the ice cream social
sounded like a desperate mountain climber abseiling down the cliff to
discover a cozy little spot to place her body in. I was looking at Sophie when
she finished reading her poem and winked at me as if she were saying ‘What?
Would you be the one in my poem?’ The short moment of silence between Sophie
and me had led to the years of togetherness since that day. Sophie loved
drinking wine much more than I thought would be safe and healthy, smoked marijuana, had a lot of moody days, and even insomnia. But I wanted her to know that I was holding
space for her by asking “what feels most heavy for you?” instead of putting her in a rehab. I did not want to make the same mistake again in my life when
I had to lose my beloved wife to the silent depression. Well, Ben must have
been wrong about Sophie, or he could be right. To some random people out there,
she could be seen as an annoyingly self-asserted and smart-alecky person who
was emotionally insecure. To me, Ben’s description of Sophie was no more than iatrogenic
disorder created by her own aristocratic clans back in France without knowing what
was really going on deep down inside of her. Sophie’s dark blue blouse was not
a gloomy depiction of her personality like Ben’s, but rather became the unforgettable
memory of our first encounter.
Expressions
1. ice cream social: a planned social gathering
2. to
tip somebody off about…: to give
someone information in a discreet or confidential way
3. perse: dark grayish blue resembling indigo
4. to sneeze at…: to take light of/ to ignore
5. with malice aforethought: the evil intention to kill or harm, which is held to
distinguish unlawful killing from murder
6. gens du monde: leaders in society/ fashionable socialites
7. cottagecore: living a simple, rural lifestyle
8.
to
be beside oneself (with …): to
be with a particular feeling or emotion, it is so strong that it makes you
almost out of control:
9. to wizen: (transitive or intransitive verb) to
become dry, shrunken, and wrinkled often as a result of aging or of failing
vitality
10. veracious:
speaking or representing the truth
11. ailurophile:
a cat lover
12. to
whitewash: deliberately
attempt to conceal unpleasant or incriminating facts about (someone or
something)
13. to
lambast: criticize (someone or
something) harshly
14. barbiturate:
any of a class of sedative and sleep-inducing drugs
derived from barbituric acid
15. to
abseil: descend a rock face or other
near-vertical surface by using a doubled rope coiled round the body and fixed
at a higher point; rappel
16. to
hold space for someone: being
physically, mentally, and emotionally present for someone. It means putting
your focus on someone to support them as they feel their feelings
17. iatrogenic
(disease/event/disorder): relating to
illness caused by medical examination or treatment
*Picture Source: https://theweek.com/articles/775786/french-women-dont-sad-other-useful-lies
