“Very well, as far as I can see. I want to speak to you about myself—my mind wanders—I cannot concentrate, nothing interests me; I go back always to the past; the things I have lived through haunt me.”
“You are trying too hard to forget.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. If we wipe out memory, we throw into the dust heap of oblivion the best part of our life, experience.”
“But if that experience is unbearable?”
“We can make it bearable. We must work it the right way.”
“But I cannot see how! Father Cabello spoke about the ‘gift of forgetting.’”
The doctor smiled. “I am not for such narcotics. We shouldn’t go about hypnotizing ourselves. A man of mind should be able to deal with the complications of his nature in an intelligent manner.”
This meant nothing to Floyd; the doctor was talking “over his head.”
“I’ll try to make it clearer to you. You have got yourself tangled up. What you think so terrible one day will be precious to you in years to come. How do you stand financially?”