The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

An unnamed something that I occasionally write in. I like that better. Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters.

You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.

“Talk to me,” he said. “There’s nothing to say. I just get so stuck in my head sometimes. I feel like I’m wading through mud.”

I love Gabriel so much. He is without doubt the love of my life. I love him so totally, completely, sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me. Sometimes I think— No. I won’t write about that.

She was immobilized, frozen—a statue carved from ice—with a strange, frightened look on her face, as if confronting some unseen terror.

Normally Alicia labored weeks, even months, before embarking on a new picture, making endless sketches, arranging and rearranging the composition, experimenting with color and form—a long gestation followed by a protracted birth as each brushstroke was painstakingly applied.

Alcestis.

I remember thinking that while everyone was talking, writing, arguing, about Alicia, at the heart of this frantic, noisy activity there was a void—a silence. A sphinx.

grew up feeling edgy, afraid, anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me.

A rag doll discarded by an angry toddler.

Mum and I made a snowman. Unconsciously or not, we built him to represent our absent master: I christened him Dad, and with his big belly, two black stones for eyes, and two slanting twigs for stern eyebrows, the resemblance was uncanny. We completed the illusion by giving him my father’s gloves, hat, and umbrella. Then we pelted him violently with snowballs, giggling like naughty children.

didn’t want to die. Not yet; not when I hadn’t lived. This gave me a kind of hope, however murky and ill defined.

As I talked, I found that no matter how distressing the details I related, I could feel nothing. I was disconnected from my emotions, like a hand severed from a wrist. I talked about painful memories and suicidal impulses—but couldn’t feel them.

This may seem hard to grasp, but those tears were not hers. They were mine. At the time I didn’t understand. But that’s how therapy works. A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist; and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him. As Ruth fed mine back to me.

You become increasingly comfortable with madness—and not just the madness of others, but your own. We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.

The only hint of its dangerous occupants was the line of security cameras perched on the fences like watching birds of prey.

He led me down interconnecting corridors punctuated by locked doors—a rhythm of slams and bolts and keys turning in locks.

The patients were all women—and most had coarse features, lined, scarred. They’d had difficult lives, suffering from horrors that had driven them to retreat into the no-man’s-land of mental illness; their journeys were etched into their faces, impossible to miss.

I became resolved to stop at nothing until Alicia became my patient.

Obsession?

I tried to conceal my excitement.

I tried to contain my nerves and prepare myself. I tried to silence the negative voice in my head—my father’s voice—telling me I wasn’t up to the job, I was useless, a fraud. Shut up, I thought, shut up, shut up—

She used to say we are made up of different parts, some good, some bad, and that a healthy mind can tolerate this ambivalence and juggle both good and bad at the same time. Mental illness is precisely about a lack of this kind of integration—we end up losing contact with the unacceptable parts of ourselves.

To help Alicia, I needed to understand her, and her relationship with Gabriel.

An unsolicited approach to Alicia’s family by her psychotherapist was unorthodox to say the least.

As I look back, this was my first professional transgression in dealing with Alicia—setting an unfortunate precedent for what followed.

In many ways my fate was already decided—like in a Greek tragedy.

Reference to greek prof Diomedes?

We went to a pub near the station, the Slaughtered Lamb.

Slaughtered lamb... Biblical reference?

“I take special care of her. No one knows her like I do, not even Professor Diomedes.” His voice had a boastful note. It annoyed me for some reason—I wondered how well he really knew her, or if he was just bragging.

Jealous, possessive over Alicia

I’d watch her sometimes, without her knowing. I’d stand outside her house and look, hoping she would appear at the window.” He laughed. This story was starting to make me feel uncomfortable.

Theo asking ab Alicia reminded Yuri of this

Yuri gave me an odd smile. “Let me give you some advice. Go home to your wife. Go home to Kathy, who loves you.… And leave Alicia behind.”

She had a spontaneity, a lightness—she took a delight in living and was endlessly amused by life.

We made love all night, until dawn. I remember so much white everywhere: white sunlight creeping around the edges of the curtains, white walls, white bedsheets; the whites of her eyes, her teeth, her skin. I’d never known that skin could be so luminous, so translucent: ivory white with occasional blue veins visible just beneath the surface, like threads of color in white marble. She was a statue; a Greek goddess come to life in my hands.

Same comments ab veins as previous Alicia description. Compare to greek goddess again

she was my invitation to life, one I grasped with both hands.

absorbed her youthful exuberance, her unself-consciousness and joy. I said yes to her every suggestion and every whim. I didn’t recognize myself. I liked this new person,

I was consumed with lust, perpetually, urgently hungry for her. I needed to keep touching her; I couldn’t get close enough.

It’s hard to imagine two women more different than Kathy and Alicia. Kathy makes me think of light, warmth, color, and laughter. When I think of Alicia, I think only of depth, of darkness, of sadness. Of silence.

It doesn’t feel like England. More like a foreign country—Greece or somewhere.

Greek

The whole park is strewn with red-faced, semi-naked bodies, like a beach or a battlefield, on blankets or benches or spread out on the grass.

Because it’s not Jesus. It’s Gabriel. Incredible that I didn’t see it before. Somehow, without intending to, I’ve put Gabriel up there instead. It’s his face I’ve painted, his body. Isn’t that insane? So I must surrender to that—and do what the painting demands of me.

Gabriel sacrificed? Comparing gabriel to jesus

I suppose what scares me is giving in to the unknown.

That’s why I always make so many sketches—trying to control the outcome—no wonder nothing comes to life—because I’m not really responding to what’s going on in front of me. I need to open my eyes and look—and be aware of life as it is happening,

a jumble of bodies—boys in rolled-up shorts with bare chests, girls in bikinis or bras—skin everywhere, burning, reddening flesh. The sexual energy was palpable—their hungry, impatient thirst for life.

When we have sex, I always feel an insatiable hunger for him—for a kind of union between us—something that’s bigger than me, bigger than us, beyond words—something holy.

Holy; weird muse/obsession

I couldn’t stop thinking about the homeless man. Apart from pity, there was another feeling, unnameable somehow—a kind of fear. I pictured him as a baby in his mother’s arms. Did she ever imagine her baby would end up crazy, dirty and stinking, huddled on the pavement, muttering obscenities?

thought of my mother. Was she crazy? Is that why she did it? Why she strapped me into the passenger seat of her yellow Mini and sped us toward that redbrick wall? I always liked that car, its cheerful canary yellow. The same yellow as in my paint box. Now I hate that color—every time I use it, I think of death.

SHe jut finished compring nice things (market/ canal vs crazy hobo; sweet little bird vs dead wrottijng with maggots) and they are referencjng this.

Sometimes I think I was the intended victim—it was me she was trying to kill, not herself. But that’s crazy. Why would she want to kill me?

was crying for all of us. There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it.

I’m terrified of myself—and of my mother in me. Is her madness in my blood? Is it? Am I going to— No. Stop. Stop— I’m not writing about that. I’m not.

don’t, not about most things, but—I mean, they might think that’s how you see me.” I laughed. “I don’t think you’re the son of God,

I didn’t need them anymore; I didn’t need anyone now that I had him. He saved me—like Jesus. Maybe that’s what the painting is about. Gabriel is my whole world—and has been since the day we met. I’ll love him no matter what he does, or what happens—no matter how much he upsets me—no matter how untidy or messy he is—how thoughtless, how selfish. I’ll take him just as he is. Until death do us part.