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 # 93. Troy, the Garbage Collector
Troy was one the most unforgettable inmates on my mind
when I had visited the prison as a team doctor of the correctional and
rehabilitative program for prisoners. I was in charge of interviewing and
helping this man to repent his own misconduct so he would return to the society
as a person with a healthy mindset. It was a year-long program in which the inmates
are supposed to share all his thoughts, feelings, and even the petty excuses or
motives behind their crime. What puzzled me throughout the program was that I was
gradually coming to the point of understanding, not reforming Troy about what
he had done.
Every time I visited his cell, most of the other prisoners
told me Troy had been eagerly looking forward to the next session with me. I
could tell how excited he was when I asked him about the days he was preparing
to kill the rapists and pedophiles in his neck of the woods. Troy never
seemed to prevaricate when he described what motivated him to keep
murdering the rapists and how he pulled it off. As a single
father who lost his precious daughter when she was raped and murdered 5 years
ago, Troy had no other things left in life that kept him going. The only force
that made him stay alive for another day was the indefatigable wrath and urge
to retaliate. “Dr. J, did you ask me why I do not look back on what I
did? You really don’t know why? ‘Cause I have no regrets or remorse. Not at
all. Never.” On our last day of the reformation program, he handed me a thick book
of daily self-report that was full of raging torrent of emotions, mostly madness through the dog-eared pages. It was a diary of deep
rage and resentment that Troy had kept for all those years since he lost his daughter.
Here's a painful excerpt from his log that I am still
keeping in my patients’ file.
“..... A close friend of mine Jeff, the warden of the local
jail, is like a battery recharger in my life. He used to tip me off when a rapist
and/or a pedophile was about to be released, and I’d become full of energy and
hopes to take the filthy garbage out of innocent people’s lives. For months, I
had thought and gathered every possible way to end the lives of those human garbage
by secretly following them. With hundreds of thorough image-trainings in my
mind, I was able to pull it off so smoothly for me but very painfully for the
criminals. Like my great grandpa used to tell me about the heavy Cacimbos
in his stories back in Africa, my murder project was turning out well, satisfactory,
and hidden like ghostly shadows in thick powerful fog, segueing from one purge
to another. I didn't need to get doped up to kill them. I wouldn't trade my fury for the world, because that was what kept me alive. I was a garbage collector in the morning and became an eliminator
of those worthless purgeable by night. My mantra of killing those
criminals was always the same ‘slow and painful’. Those clueless bunches of criminals do deserve all our curse, and their filthy blood should be removed to the last drop from this world.....”
The year-long interviews and education of reformation at
the prison had made no change in Troy’s mind and came to plant a bemused
sympathy in mine.
Expressions
1. inmates: a person confined to an
institution such as a prison or hospital
2. neck of the woods: a
particular area or locality
3. to prevaricate: to speak or act in an evasive way/ to beat around
the bush
4. to pull something off: to succeed in achieving or winning
something difficult
5. to retaliate: to repay or to make
an attack or assault in return for a similar attack
6. Cacimbo(s): a heavy mist or drizzle that occurs in the Congo Basin, often
accompanied by onshore winds
7. purgeable: able to be purged/
eliminated/removed
8. bemused: puzzled or confused
*image source: https://www.alexandriava.gov/RefuseCollection
