Page 242 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Peggy and I comforted each other that weekend, and she was there for me.
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So, you are now free of responsibility at school, at least for the next nine months. You’re starting to see that you’re in pain and that you need healing, that you’ve gone astray and need to find yourself. You’ve never been to Europe. You’ve never seen the whole United States, Canada, South America, or Antarctica. You’ve never written a book, painted a picture, or done serious manual labor. You are starting to realize that something important has happened, that you’ve got to free your mind of stress and get your head straight. You need room to breathe, to think, to withdraw, to change, to strengthen yourself, to avoid repeating destructive patterns, to mature, to contribute some- thing of value, to set things right, and to do something entirely new—in short, to be reborn.
Therefore, and true to form, you drive to 975 East 23rd Street, where you will stay, and maybe see a shrink, and maybe get a job. My father suggested, actually pretty much demanded, that I do all three, and I gave nary a thought to any other option.
About one week after I got home, I had my first encounter with a psychiatrist and soon thereafter, courtesy of Charlie Hirsch, the bluster- ing attorney who had told me in no uncertain terms how wrong, naïve, and stupid I was when it came to my views on strikes by public workers (see Chapter Twelve), I had a job interview.
First things first. I had never before had “professional help,” as they call it. It was not something that my mother, who might have had her own problems, easily advocated. In her case, I suspect that her concern that embarrassment might flow was very potent, but that concern was ultimately overcome by her hope that help might do me some good. My father was in favor; so off I went to an office on the first floor of an apart- ment house that was located somewhere on Ocean Avenue in the Ditmas section of Brooklyn. The psychiatrist probably did not have an Austrian accent, but based on what I saw and experienced, he might as well have.
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