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 # 96. Freddie, wake up and get real!
“Are you kidding me? Anna is not just what you see.
Actually, she’s the opposite to your definition of her.” My friend Freddie said
that I’d need to go back to Med school and study the whole courses over again
if I really thought Anna was the most warm-hearted and compassionate person in
the world. Freddie had lived with Anna for 5 years and now he was about to separate
with his once beloved wife. I kept wondering why he said that Anna had been
totally misunderstood by me for all those years. It was not long before I
started to see what Freddie meant to say about Anna. She was a manipulator
disguised in her smile of mansuetude.
Whenever Demi and I went out on a double date for dinner
or movies with Freddie and her fiancé Anna, nothing seemed peculiar or
suspicious to my eyes in terms of their relationship. They always looked like a
picture-perfect couple that kept cooing and caring for each other. They’d
finish each other’s sentences and never fail to give compliments about how they
looked. Honestly, I’d find Anna’s sense of humor somewhat offbeat from
time to time. She would hysterically laugh at her own self-deprecating humor in
front of us all. “What do you think of my dress tonight? This is such an old clothing
that is the most expensive. It’s all torn and worn in the hem, but I like it
because it is the priciest dress that Freddie bought me 3 years ago. Well, this
has become my uniform for date nights, and Hank has always been praising my
look. He is either extremely patient with boredom, or…. the OG cheapskate.”
We all laughed, but Freddie was like this was not his kind of humor and it didn’t
make him laugh at all.
Freddie said Anna was obviously lying through her
teeth when she mentioned her dress and how she felt about her wardrobe on that
night of our get-together. He said he got no reason to gasp in surprise
at all when she cracked a phony joke that would make her look down-to-earth,
simple, and pure in front of other people. For the past five years, Freddie was
blind to the fact that he had been maltreated by the woman he called his soul
mate. Anna always made sure that Freddie
should take the responsibility for his choice of wife and her happiness, even
if it made him leave all his relationships or rapport with his family and close
friends. No matter how much money he had to spend, how much time he needed to
spare, how hard it was to ditch his religion, and how much emotionally drained
he would get, Freddie thought he was supposed to follow what Anna wished for. The
more effort he made to please Anna, the lonelier and emptier he felt inside.
And finally, he made up his mind to set forth on his new life and let her know how
he felt being controlled and gaslit for all those years. He was fully ready not
to let Anna’s fake love for him slide anymore. Freddie said “Well… You have seen
a lot of guys totally whipped like me, right? You must also have seen many
women like Anna who manipulates their partners. A dime a dozen, right? I
need your help. I decided to leave Anna, but still need some faith in my belief
that she was gaslighting me. I want to make sure she’d been more like my
arch-enemy in life.”
The exotic mehndi on Freddie’s forearm along with
the initial “A” looked like another sign that he had been
trapped inside the web weaved by Anna, and it reassured me to help my friend to
wake up. Now I look back in hindsight, the dress that Anna pretended to humblebrag
and joked about on the night of our double date had a moiré texture, which
appeared who she really was. ‘Poor Freddie. You’ve been spellbound and too
dizzy to look straight. But better late than never, buddy. It’s time you moved
on with your life as you wish.’
Expressions
1. mansuetude: gentleness; meekness
2. to coo: to speak in a soft, gentle voice; to murmur
3. offbeat: unusual; unconventional
4. OG: someone or something that is an original or originator and especially one
that is highly respected or regarded
5.
to lie
through one’s teeth: to say something
completely untrue
6.
to gasp:
to take a short, quick breath through the mouth, especially
because of surprise, pain, or shock
7. phony: not genuine; fraudulent
8.
whipped:
being completely controlled by your girlfriend or
boyfriend
9. a dime a dozen: very common and of no particular value
10. mehndi: the practice of making designs on someone's hands
with henna
11. to humblebrag: to make an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating
statement with the actual intention of drawing attention to something of which
one is proud
12.
moiré:
ripple-like pattern (*Moiré effect is a visual
perception that occurs when viewing a set of lines or dots that is superimposed
on another set of lines or dots, where the sets differ in relative size, angle,
or spacing.)
