murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"Every now and then," said Reiko, now looking at her left hand.
"Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But
that's OK. She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being
able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die
inside, then you're in big trouble."
"Did I say something I shouldn't have?"
"Not a thing. Don't worry. Just speak your mind honestly That's the
best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset
the way Naoko did, but in the long run it's for the best. That's what
you should do if you're serious about making Naoko well again. Like I
told you in the beginning, you should think not so much about
wanting to help her as wanting to recover yourself by helping her to
recover. That's the way it's done here. So you have to be honest and
say everything that comes to mind, while you're here at least. Nobody
does that in the outside world, right?"
"I guess not," I said.
"I've seen all kinds of people come and go in my time here," she said,
"maybe too many people. So I can usually tell by looking at a person
whether they're going to get better or not, almost by instinct. But in
Naoko's case, I'm not sure. I have absolutely no idea what's going to
happen to her. For all I know, she could be 100 per cent recovered
next month, or she could go on like this for years. So I really can't tell
you what to do aside from the most generalized kind of advice: to be
honest and help each other."
"What makes Naoko such a hard case for you?"
"Probably because I like her so much. I think my emotions get in the
way and I can't see her clearly. I mean, I really like her. But aside
from that, she has a bundle of different problems that are all tangled
up with each other so that it's hard to unravel a single one. It may take
a very long time to undo them all, or something could trigger them to
come unravelled all at once. It's kind of like that. Which is why I can't
be sure about her."
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