Medusa

‘But, Stheno, why would he ever like me?’

‘You’re worth dying for, Medusa. You’re wonderful. You’re the greatest joy in my life.’

want a man to treat you as if his happiness had found a home.’

‘I’m not that special!’

‘Never let me hear you say that again. Everyone deserves to be loved. People have never been nice enough to you, Med. Ever. They’ve been jealous and greedy, and then cruel and judgemental, and every time, you’ve believed what they had to say about you. So I don’t want you to have your heart broken over the first bidder.’

Just because one man is being nice now, doesn’t mean he always will be.’

‘Medusa, if there ever were someone, a boy, for example—’

‘
Why would there ever be a boy?’

‘If there ever were, you must never deny who you are, or pretend to be the woman you think he would want you to be. You’ll be walking on a lonely road that leads to nowhere.’

I’d told Perseus that I was hiding, but maybe I wasn’t at all. Maybe I had found my space to simply be.

Maybe I hadn’t realised it, but I’d found a kind of peace.

But you can’t start a fresh chapter until you’ve ended the old one

What you remember and how you remember: it makes you who you are

You see, remembering’s a blessing and a curse. You can’t erase your bad memories, but a life without regrets is a life unlived

When beauty’s assigned you as a girl, it somehow becomes the essence of your being. It takes over everything else you might be. When you’re a boy, it never dominates who you can be.’

My whole life, no one had ever stopped to
listen,
to ask me a single question. They’d just looked at me, and thought they’d found their answer