Alex Michaelides

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth.

The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.

—ALICE MILLER

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may

convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.

If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips;

betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

—SIGMUND FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

painting was a self-portrait. She titled it in the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas, in light blue Greek lettering.

One word:

Alcestis.

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,

but he noticed—of course he did, he notices everything.

I need to open my eyes and look—and be aware of life as it is happening, and not simply how I want it to be.

Until death do us part.

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.

love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love