Cultivate a black technology god

Chapter 200 Ariel's past (3)

Ariel suddenly remembered that Dr. Hall was waiting for her answer after asking straight-forward questions, and now there was no time for her to meditate.

She replied slowly:

"Oh, I don't have any serious physical discomfort, doctor."

She desperately wanted his help, but was afraid of telling him too much, so she said a few more words:

"I'm just a little bit neurotic, and I had a lot of neurotic problems at the academy, so they sent me home to go back to school when I was better."

Dr. Hall listened attentively.

Ariel felt that he really wanted to help her.

But since she always put herself in a position of insignificance, she couldn't understand why Dr. Hall reached out to her.

"So you're not at school now,"

The doctor asked:

"Then what are you doing?"

"Teaching in a junior high school," she answered.

Although she was not a college graduate, she was still able to teach because of the wartime shortage of teachers.

"So it is," said Dr. Hall:

"What are the manifestations of the neuroticism you mentioned?"

The question frightened her.

What are the performances?
That was exactly what she didn't want to talk about.

No matter how much Dr. Hall wanted to help her, no matter how much she wanted his help, she couldn't tell him.

She could never let others know about this.

Even if she wanted to, she couldn't.

There is a sinister force hanging over her life that sets her apart.

But what kind of power this is, even she herself can't say it, it's unknown.

Ariel just said:

"I knew I had to see a psychiatrist."

She herself felt that this sentence was a bit rhetoric, but it was difficult for her to see the reaction on Dr. Hall's face.

He was not surprised, nor judged.

"Let me make an appointment for you," he said smoothly:
"I'll let you know when you come with mother on Thursday."

"Okay, thank you, doctor," Ariel replied.

This string of simple and rigid idioms expressing gratitude seems very empty.

Words, she thought, could not express the raging passion she had now.

She went to a psychiatrist not only to recover but to return to college.

Going back to school was her dream, and finding a psychiatrist was the only way out.

Ariel said nothing to her parents, but on Thursday, Dr. Hall informed her mother:
"The time Dr. Wilbur has made with you is at two o'clock in the afternoon on August 8th. She gets along very well with young people."

Ariel felt her heart pound, then jerk.

However, the excitement of meeting the psychiatrist was tempered by the pronoun "she".

Female doctor?Did you hear that right?All the doctors she knew were men.

"Yes," Dr. Hall was still saying.

"Dr. Wilbur has had great success with the patients I have referred to her."

Ariel listened absent-mindedly to his words, thinking of the female psychiatrist all the time.

But she suddenly thought about it.

She had a good relationship with the college nurse, Miss Updike, but a bad relationship with a male neurologist at the Mayo Clinic.

He saw her only once before dismissing her.

His panacea was to tell her father: As long as she kept writing poetry, she would be fine.

Dr. Hall put his hand on her mother's arm and said firmly:
"And you mothers, don't go with her."

Ariel was almost petrified when she heard the doctor's tone and saw her mother's apparent acquiescence.

She has always been with her mother since she was a child.

Ariel has never been able to change this situation, and she has tried every means to no avail.

Her mother is omnipresent in Ariel's life, as unchangeable as the sunrise and sunset.

But Hall changed that in one sentence.

Moreover, the meaning of this sentence is more than that.

No one - not family, not friends, not even Ariel's father, let alone Ariel herself - had ever told her mother what to do and what not to do.

Her mother was a tall man with a heart of stone and an invincible man.

She won't follow orders.

It was she who gave the orders.

When she and her mother left the clinic, Ariel hoped fervently that the female psychiatrist she was about to meet had no gray hair.

This desire may be ridiculous, but it is very strong.

At two o'clock in the afternoon on August 8th, Ariel came to the sixth floor of the Art of Medicine Building in Omaha and walked into Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur's consulting room.

The doctor's hair is not white, but red.

The doctor is still very young, probably ten years older than Ariel at most.

Her eyes were very kind.

Yes, very kind indeed.

However, what Ariel was violently churning about was still the two opposing emotions she experienced in Dr. Hall's clinic-on the one hand, the sense of relief that she had finally come to treat neurotic problems;
On the other hand there was fear, for she had a strange, incurable disease.

Ariel manages to mask these conflicting feelings by spouting how she was extremely neurotic at the academy and often had to leave the classroom as a result.

"It was bad at the academy," recalls Ariel:
"Miss Updike, the school nurse, was very worried about me. The school doctor referred me to the neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. I only visited once, and he assured me that I would be all right. But I got worse and worse. It got worse and worse. They sent me home and said they couldn't go back until I got better."

Dr. Wilbur is very patient.

Ariel felt so at ease seeing her smile.

"Here," Ariel continued:
"I'm at home now. It sucks. It sucks. I'm not with my parents all the time. They don't let me out of their sight. They have a straight face. I know they're ashamed that I was sent home from the academy. They have high expectations for my education. But I will go back when the situation gets better."

The doctor hadn't said a word so far, so Ariel went on.

"I'm an only child. My parents treat me very well."

Dr. Wilbur nodded and she lit her cigarette.

"They worry about me," Ariel went on:
"Everybody was worried about me--my friends, our pastor, everyone. I was doing some illustrations for the pastor's academic lectures. He was talking, and I was drawing the beast he was talking about. Really drawn Vivid. I was hanging from scaffolding ten feet above the stage. I usually used chalk on heavy drawing paper to draw out what the pastor was saying. He kept me busy. He..."

"How do you feel about yourself?" Dr. Wilbur interrupted her.

"You've told me what other people think of you. But what about yourself?"

Ariel spoke briefly about her physical ailments, such as her poor appetite and being five foot five and weighing only 79 pounds.

Also chronic sinusitis and extremely poor vision.

"I sometimes feel like I'm looking through a tunnel."

She paused and added:

"I'm not in good health at all, but I'm said to be perfectly healthy. I've been sick and not sick since I was a kid."

Can you remember your dreams?The doctor wants to know.

No, she couldn't remember.

I had nightmares when I was a kid, but I can't remember them either.

The doctor asked her to talk about her relationship, and Ariel was in a daze.

But the doctor insisted she talk.

What Ariel said only caused the doctor to say this:

"You're still here. Your problems are solvable."

Regarding this point, Dr. Wilbur is sure, but she also knows that it is not easy to influence Ariel.

Ariel was so childish, so immature, so unsophisticated.

Ariel sincerely wants to come again, but she knows that when she pays in the outhouse:

If I don't have a long talk with my parents first, it is impossible to come to the doctor again.

She still feels she can get better if she continues to work with her doctor.

Did she talk too much to the doctor?
When the elevator descended rapidly from the sixth floor, Ariel was thinking about this problem.

But she knew: what she dared not say was never spoken.

As she walked out of the building into the August sunshine, she knew she would never tell Dr. Wilbur what she should and could say about her personal situation, never.

Ariel came to Wilbur's clinic for the second time without any setbacks.

When she stepped out of the building, she suddenly remembered that her mother was still waiting for her at the nearby Brandeis department store.

Heidi Dorset was so frustrated that she couldn't accompany her daughter to the doctor's meeting that she walked her daughter all the way to the elevator of the building.

"I'll be waiting for you at Brandeis,"

Heidi instructed at the elevator door.Here is the historical interdependence:

I will go wherever you go.

Ariel walked into the Brandeis department store with slow steps and obediently saw her mother's thin figure, proud demeanor and head of white hair.

The first thing my mother said when they met was: "Did the doctor mention me?"

Although it was an inquiry, it was in an inquiring tone.

"She didn't say anything," Ariel replied.

"Okay, let's go," her mother fidgeted.

"I want to go to the library," Ariel said.

"Yes," agreed her mother,
"I also want to borrow a book."

In the library on Harney Street, Ariel and her mother went to different bookshelves, and later met at the borrowing desk.

Ariel picked up a copy of "Silver Cord" by Sidney Howard.

"What kind of book are you?" Mother asked.

"It's a script," Ariel replied. "Dr. Wilbur asked me to see it."

That evening, while Ariel cooked dinner and later washed the dishes, her mother sat watching "Silver Cord."

After reading it, she commented:
"I don't understand why Dr. Wilbur wants you to see this. What does it have to do with you?"

Harper Dorsett remained silent while his wife and daughter spoke, silently pondering several questions.

He reluctantly agreed to Ariel's treatment, because since Ariel was sent home, he knew that sooner or later something had to be done.

Although he wasn't sure whether going to a psychiatrist was the way out, he was willing to try.

But now he is wondering, is this decision right?

Therapy started on August 8th and was done once a week throughout the summer and early fall.

For the Dorsett family, this is a time of watching and worrying.

Every time Ariel came home from Dr. Wilbur's office, her parents were as eager as voracious vultures.

"What did she say about us?" They sometimes rushed to ask, and sometimes asked in unison,

"What else did she say?" But never:

"How are you?" or "How is it going?"

And never, as Ariel had hoped so sincerely—to be speechless, to say nothing.

The treatment itself is painful enough, not to mention the interrogation of the family.

"You knocked yourself out," the doctor told Ariel.

"You rarely think about yourself. The emotion is uncomfortable, so you blame others for not liking you."

Another topic is:

"You're a genius, but take it too seriously. Take it too seriously. You need more of a social life."

Another theme is: "When do you lose your temper?"

Dr. Wilbur advised her:

"Leave home and go to New York or Chicago. There you can meet people who love art as much as you do. Let's go."

Ariel wished she could.

The restlessness she felt at home had intensified since treatment began.

The doctor's comment that Ariel needed more social life deeply angered her mother.

"Look," her mother declared scornfully when she found out,
"What have I been saying for years? Is my diagnosis wrong? Why don't you give me all the money and let me tell you what's wrong?"

Ariel's parents dissected what the doctor said and criticized the doctor himself.

Dr. Wilbur smokes, but decent women don't smoke, and decent men don't smoke either.

She doesn't go to any church.

All in all, Ariel's parents didn't trust the doctor, and said so.

They had always had the upper hand over their daughter, and now they wanted to.

Her mother, seeing everything in black and white and black and white, made Dr. Wilbur useless.

According to Heidi's instruction, whether it is a doctor or not, as long as you don't do things according to her wishes, everything is wrong.

Her mother's attitude towards Dr. Wilbur was not surprising.

But her father's attitude took her by surprise.

Ariel thought that he was more objective and reasonable. Even if she was dissatisfied with the doctor, she would think that Wilbur might be a good doctor.

However, Ariel soon discovered that it was impossible for her father not to disagree with Dr. Wilbur's advice or advice, because the two lived in very different ways.

The doctor and her parents belong to two worlds.

"Dr. Wilbur doesn't really care about you," her mother repeatedly warned:
"She has taught you one thing now. When she can take advantage of you, she will teach you something different. Remember, miss, if you tell her that you don't love your biological mother, she will It will come for you."

Ariel had to assure her mother that she would never say that, because it wasn't true.

"I love you, Mother, I really do," Ariel said repeatedly.

The general situation has been dire.

Ariel longs for betterment, but the situation at home is unhelpful and harmful.

Yet there was no way out.Regarding Dr. Wilbur and the treatment she gave, Ariel had nothing to say, or nothing to say.

If you say it, you will cause trouble.Don't talk about it, her parents say she is moody and has a changeable temperament.Although they had said many times in the past that she had it, they now said that Dr. Wilbur was responsible for it.

"She'll drive you crazy," her mother warned her,
"Then they send you to the hospital because that's how doctors make money."

In contrast, outsiders say that she has improved significantly.

But whenever outsiders mentioned this, her mother would laugh at her.

Her father also half listened and didn't take it seriously.

Her mother repeatedly brainwashed him with these words:

The reason why she is good is because she is grown up; anyone who grows up and is sensible will always have insight.

Ariel felt that if her mother hadn't instilled such thoughts in her father, her father would have been sane.

Ariel is 22 years old, but her mother talks about her daughter not as an adult, but as a teenager.

Fortunately, Ariel was not affected by the brainwashing work.

The weekly one-hour sessions continued throughout September.

Ariel grows more and more convinced that Dr. Wilbur can fix her, but she's still wracked by her own problems.

(End of this chapter)