The Silent Patient intrigued me to read due to the silent aspect. I feel a lot of people are divided and wanted to bring clarity into my thoughts of this story.
Theo wanted to get Alicia to speak so he could speak. He wanted to help her to help himself. He was unable to help himself and his inner child because he first could not and then chose not to. He couldn’t help his inner child when his father beat him with the belt repeatedly; asking himself if he deserved those beatings. After he had freedom as an adult, sadly, he had the choice to leave Kathy and honor his inner child but ends up not doing that. Theo meant well, he always did. That’s why the ending revolves around the snowflakes that fall on his hand the same way he felt those snowflakes with his mother. He was that little child who just wanted to be loved.
In relationships, the first love is always the hardest. For an exceptional few the first love can be this blessing. This is rare. For most people I believe that the first love you meet is the first real reflection of what you need to heal. I think even if the person you’re in the relationship with means well, you will be for the first time shown your own insecurities and unresolved traumas. The first love hits the hardest and feels like “an additional limb” as Theo says. That is why it is hard for him to end the relationship with Kathy. He chose this. However, as someone who has experienced this — it does get better. It truly does. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Your own insecurities and unresolved traumas are shown to you through your first love so that you can acknowledge them and work on them. That is how I got to the light at the end of the tunnel. I also made the hardest decision to leave the relationship. It hurt like hell. However, I’ve never loved myself more. Usually in toxic first love relationships you can feel gaslighted to stay without even knowing it — Kathy accusing him with the weed and him feeling like a “naughty child,” just like how he and his mother were “naughty children” when his father was away. Theo even said he tried to “forget” his wife’s infidelity. He saw it with his own eyes but then excused it, saying maybe he was high. I’ll get back to this in a few paragraphs, but Alicia worshipped Gabriel and would have accepted Gabriel even if he did something wrong because she always thought at the end of the day he truly loved her. Theo did the same thing with Kathy. Until the absolute end of the story, he gave Kathy so much love.
When you do not acknowledge what is being reflected back to you in the first love relationship — trauma, insecurities, internalized voices you never knew you had — the cycle will be repeated again. Here’s the real kicker: Theo never actually loved Kathy, nor did Kathy love him. They both were partnered before they met and essentially that night left both of their current partners for each other. That quickly. So effortlessly. Theo admitted that he was first drawn to Kathy from a lust-based view at the start. There wasn’t love. He talked about her whites in her eyes, her white teeth, her black hair. Where was the love? The phone call where Theo called his current partner at the time and they were in tears? That was not love.When Kathy cheated on Theo, it reflected the wound that he felt — that he was trying to give love to people who could never give the same love back. And that did not make him a monster. At all. He never caused the pain his father had. He never caused the troubles Kathy had growing up. The reason why the people around him never could give him the same love back had nothing to do with him. However, he thought it did have something to do with him. What was the something? That he was a monster. He believed it internally. Ruth said to him that she thinks that he deserves way more than Kathy. Ruth saw the truth that Theo was kind at heart. Why else would Ruth see Theo in the middle of the night without a session? Ruth cared for him! She worked with him for years. Due to Ruth knowing how kind and loving Theo was, she said Theo MUST LEAVE because despite all the wounded people in his life who couldn't give the same love back, there are people in this world would willingly would and would appreciate him way more than he ever has felt. He did not want to take that chance. That was his choice and he chose to not go through. He chose to repeat this cycle.
Theo believes that he deserves nothing else, and it is hard for him to leave someone who he felt understood him more than he ever felt understood before — well, at least until weed. Weed was his mother before Kathy was. Weed was his addiction and his high. Kathy was his high after the high weed gave him. There was never love, but an unwarranted child-like addiction of nurturing. The love dynamic was: there was never love between Theo and Kathy, but instead, addiction. He feels these intense feelings about Kathy and loves her, and his intense feelings became obsession. He was obsessed with finding out what she had been up to, cheating on him. I don’t think he ever truly loved her because love, as Ruth said, is this free and calming source. Kathy herself was deeply flawed and was unable to even love herself. There was no love in that relationship that was healthy. In Theo’s mind, after Kathy cheated on him, the second person that understood him the most was Alicia in his eyes — because he saw her through that window being as innocent as him, in his words. And I feel he felt that if he could heal her, he could heal himself in this deep psychological way. I think he waited six years to even be admitted to that position at that hospital so he could finally heal himself — or at least he thought he could.
The intention of Alicia actually attacking him was played off well by the Author. If that altercation was a first-time occurrence and she was just silent until that point – we would have been suspicious of Theo as readers. However, the author put in the fact that she did that same thing to the other patient in the facility to mask that behavior as "mental." In reality? – Alicia knew that Theo was her attacker from 7 years ago. That's why she attacked him. She played a game with him throughout these sessions because she had nothing to lose. She kept trying to boldly let him know that she knew who he was. She was trailing Theo along that she knew and she didn’t even care because she didn’t even want to live. She felt she was nothing and this "nothing" concept is something I'll circle back on. I think it is really important to know — that in the relationships Alicia had, everyone was really horrible to her. Alicia didn’t have a Ruth in her life. Instead, she only had Gabriel, and I think she became codependent onto him in a way that Gabriel didn’t really like or feel comfortable with, and the saddest thing is that he never admitted this to her. This leads into Alicia's journals. Alicia idolizes Gabriel. She even associates him as Jesus — as someone who has saved her — and she gives him so much praise. But we see hints of him not really being a good person. In one of the second diary entries, she talks about him being selfish, and she does lightly touch on him bullying her. She sugarcoats him in every possible way. Remember how I said I'd circle back to this? Gabriel could do no wrong in her eyes, and the glue to this is her believing he loved her. His love was her final glue. You never understand how fragile she truly has been all these years until Gabriel wants to sacrifice her instead of him. She screams she loves him until Theo counts down, Gabriel doesn't say it back. It really makes you wonder what Gabriel’s character really is.
We don’t really know Gabriel’s character in the book up until the emails of him and Kathy. He speaks so angel like in the letters of Alicia, at one point even talking about wanting children with her. When we see his emails between Kathy? "U r a slut! Hahaha!" – VERY different side of him. He hid that side of him so well as much as we never saw his thoughts or perspective in the book. We don’t even know that that’s him when we see these emails. We think it's a random stranger. It sounds like someone else. It should have been someone else — but all along it was Gabriel. He lived a secret life that he shielded heavily from Alicia. His sexual desires and want for freedom were on the forefront. Theo says that Gabriel was beast like in his hook up with Alicia, and that is very graphic and distinctive from the angel who wanted to have children with Alicia. He had a cookie-cutter persona that stems from himself only. Gabriel is a liar and is a sick person in the inside. He is selfish. He might have shileded the affair, but as I said before – Alicia touches on his selfishness but accepts and idolizes him as someone who can do no wrong. Gabriel twisted things with him saying he was concerned for Alicia's mental when he was rabbit screwing another women. He was able to say all this and keep a perfect image – associated in the industry he works in with fashion. When Theo put Alicia and Gabriel tied behind each other to the chairs, Alicia screamed she loved Gabriel. Gabriel let out a "little boy" like voice – that almost couldn’t speak — that was the true Gabriel. That voice said he did not want to die. That voice said he wanted to sacrifice Alicia and would have been happy with it instead. That perfect husband mask is worn off. He only cared about himself and was extremely manipulative. The saddest thing is Gabriel would have dropped Kathy off as well if he did not die. Theo also said Gabriel was focused on Kathy's breasts and body at the park. From "I want children with you" to "U are such a slut! Hahah! xx". Who was Gabriel? Does he even know himself? Gabriel only knew the protection of his secrets.
Alicia still would have loved Gabriel even with the affair because like I said – his "love" for her glued her last remaining strength. His "love" was actually attention. So why did Alicia shoot him? Well, Alicia’s love followed up until the point where she really didn’t believe she could have been loved. When she knew he did not "love" her at all, all hell broke loose. She finally broke. She became the nothingness she always felt she was. I might be projecting my own experiences onto this — but she might have not had that kind of love/attention before. Again just like Theo, that was not her fault. However, she genuinely had these voices in her head, specifically from her father that scars her.
When Theo interviews Alicia, before she attacks Theo – he analyzes her eyes. He says that her eyes resemble a "clear summer day" with clarity. He observes body behavior in his patients usually, and he fixates on her eyes. He tries to find ONE word to the describe her eyes. He says her eyes do not contain anger in them but instead contain ____ then BAM! She goes towards him. The word he failed to say was familiarity. There was familiarity in her eyes, of recognizing Theo as her attacker and seeing what a whirlwind he caused onto her. Why did Alicia attack him? Well she hates Theo for leaing her to this internalized fictional realization that she thinks she has: that she is nothing, and silence is nothing, that she is silence. Her father made her think that she is silence. She belongs in silence. She belongs in invisibility. That was what she believed in but kept pushing aside. I think that all the times she blanked out on her journals and said "No I will not say that" – She would have alluded to being invisible. Most importantly Alicia attacked Theo because she hated that Theo made her realize why she chose to be silent in the first place. With literally NOTHING to lose, Alicia played a mind game with Theo. Alicia let him know slowly that she knew who he was. Alicia willingly let Theo inject her with morphine. Alicia did not fight. She accepted. Alicia became the silence while Theo became his father.
Thank you for reading and would love your thoughts in the comments. I am happy to have finished this book.
by lanasbandana