Patrickolics Anonymous

How to do you "write a diary entry" about yourself when the topic provokes such a low level of self-respect that you plan to trap it in your head anyway? When it stops itching my head, I’ll learn something. Right now, it’s all about the pathetic pain. Pathetic pain. That’s like the rubber sword of the drama world. Et tu, self? Of course, without shoving the sword in my side, I can never be sure that I’ve killed it all of the way, which is never the case, but I guess hope comes hidden in some pocket of this rubber sword theory. So, I perform a little self-masochism and use it as material to start the brain opening party at bedtime. Nice clean, jagged cut. I guess I’m determined to carve purple crescents under my eyes.

Enter brain leech. When I first got to college I figured out a way to pretend. Maybe the limit to the time that I would have to keep that mask on made it so the mask was four feet thick, well decorated, and securely fastened behind the ears. I didn’t even have to take it off at night, or I couldn’t take it off at night. Yes, we were those kids, those freshmen, playing Frisbee until three in the morning. Where were these purple ravines under the eyes then? Thank goodness I don’t have to go on a rant about how innocent I was and how things didn’t effect me to my core like I let them now. My mask may have been thicker, but I was just as dumb about my core as I am now.

Typical freshman patterns ensued for the next few weeks. We made fast friends, grew tired walking calves, scrambled through unfounded homework panic, and set an unspoken rule of no less than five to a group of us walking anywhere. I wish I could have shoved a tape recorder in my ear when I first saw him because the world needs to know what is so damn special about this person whom I do not know. I don’t take comfort in the fact that I can count myself in the company of 90% of the campus females and their vulnerability to the Patrick Force. He existed to show me how thick my mask could stay when exposed to a laser field of self-doubt, originating from my head. Apparently I never checked the warranty on that mask because I couldn’t feel it anymore.

Let’s blame some of it on Facebook, a digital scapegoat. It’s a whole page of self-authored information posing as a pair of binoculars into whosever picture you clicked on in that third hour of “researching.” The beauty came when you could revisit the page unlimited amounts of time, not because you had the time to waste, but because the brilliant site creators prevented the desired from seeing who has stared at their screen for hours with his page open. I suppose I can feel better about the fact that this colored-glass-crush, painted by an unknown Patrickian force and separating me from reality with its glass, started in person. The catch: this “in person” situation means we were within twenty yards of one another and he was talking to someone I know. Much better, I think this sword is giving me rubber burn.

I’ll remind you, this game refreshes itself in my head even now. If I were more interested in science maybe I could explain some technical theory about magnetism and its tendency to increase in power with increased distance through time. It’d probably have to factor something in there about mystery and greener grass. Correction, half-mystery. After three years of an irrational and merely intuitive crush development, I finally met Mr. Patrick W***** last spring. I was skinnier than I’d ever been for the last five years (and therefore, my small-mindedness let me be much more confident) and we were both at an ultimate Frisbee “formal.” He wore suspenders and I was wearing a dress straight from 1996, side ponytail included. I knew who the hell he was, but stubbornness prevented me from letting him have the satisfaction of knowing I was a member of the Patrickolics Anonymous like every other girl at the party (many were still in the closet about this, but we all had membership cards). He introduced himself when we were playing Quarters and I could have ripped the skin of my cheeks straight back to my ears, but of course what kind of allusive, secret crush victim would I be if something so obvious as face ripping were to happen right after we shook hands?

If the sword is making me bleed now, does it matter from what material it’s made? Bring on the band-aids, I haven’t been able to find one strong enough to heal the next thought process: now I’m at a different school where I know no one as well as I did at that university from which I thought I needed to get away. These escape reasons are dusty now and I can't read them without my pink glasses. On top of that, I refuse to stop reminding myself that I spent the summer between that party and today gaining all of that weight back onto my frame. Let’s call it another version of my mask from freshman year. To be clear, I had this body mask then too, but I seemed to ignore it a little better than I can now. Pointing out to myself this inability to discover the ignoring method, and perhaps the weight gain and memory recalls, sticks me back in a hole. If I dig it deep enough, who can blame me for giving up reaching toward the lip of the ground?