IRVINE PATI // capitol

Nobody plots murders out loud.

They say I’m weird because I don’t talk, but then they wheel right around and say I’m weird when I even try to speak. They think I’m oblivious but I’m really not; I’ve seen all their stares, their glares, their lips moving as they whisper. It’s always the same thing: ”He’s so weird – what’s wrong with him? Is he stupid or something?” I can assure you that I am not stupid. They have branded me as “inferior” to them simply because I’m unable to control my body as easily as they oh-so graciously can.

[ a p p e a r a n c e ]

As much as it pains me to say this, I think the first thing people notice about me is how I hold myself. My posture isn’t the very best: my arms are never straight down at my sides; my hands are either curled into fists or some other awkward-looking position; I drag my left foot and so I have a strange sort of limp; and I can’t exactly talk. That’s about the worst part of this whole Autistic thing. My brain – well, my conscience, at least – is entirely functional and operates as quickly as everyone else’s, but I can’t say the same for my physical body. Every movement I make is rough and sudden and I can’t exactly control the movements. When I consciously move I’m slow and it takes a lot of time to make the accurate movement I want, but when things happen involuntarily, it can get… interesting.

Other than that, I am very skinny. Like, very. You wouldn’t believe that I was born and raised in District Four – a career district where nary a person is poor. Not to mention that everyone’s diet is basically fish and those slimy creatures are so abundant. My problem, though, is that I can barely feed myself. Due to the involuntary muscle spasms, I can’t hold a spoon or fork long enough to transport food from the plate to my mouth. I’ve resorted to using just my hands or even just sticking my face down to the plate, which I know is rather unattractive but what choice do I have? I can barely take in enough substance to keep myself going every day and I’m just skin and bones.

My brown hair is always unkempt and sticking up in every direction. I have no control over it and I can’t brush it. My hazel eyes are what lets you know that I’m not completely gone. They say the eyes are the window to the soul and my eyes reveal everything about me – they’re how I portray emotions, they’re how I let people know what’s wrong with me, and aside from my mind, my eyes are all that I have complete control over.

But under those expressive eyes are dark bags that never disappear. I can rarely sleep at night, and even when I do it’s hardly more than an hour or two, so as you can imagine I’m always pretty exhausted and can nod off a few times during the day. My skin used to be a nice tan, but ever since I came to this hell hole I’ve become so pale. I have a few freckles sprinkled along my arms and torso, but not very many on my face.

There’s not much to me – I’m no threat to anyone. I’m weak, I’m frail, and I look like a strong wind could just break me in half.

[ p e r s o n a l I t y ]

Well…. my personality shows through my eyes. They’re like windows, remember? If you look into my eyes long enough then you can see everything.

I hate myself. I hate absolutely everything that is Irvine Pati: my appearance, my disability, everything. Ever since I could remember, I’ve despised myself, loathed myself, and any other adjective you might use to describe ’a strong disliking.’ I hate how I can’t control my limbs, I hate how I can hardly feed myself, I hate how I can’t sleep at night, and I hate how I can’t communicate. That’s probably the worst, actually: not being able to speak and express myself. I’m trapped within my skull – seeing, thinking, reacting – but everything is internal. I can barely do sign language and it’s so extremely frustrating. As you can imagine, caging up all these bad emotions evokes very negative thoughts. Suicide is a frequent topic that crosses my mind and I have no shame in admitting that and I’m sure that my mother would appreciate this type of thinking.

Speaking of my mother, she’s the only thing that I hate more than myself. What a pitiful excuse for a human being, she is. That woman is the epitome of bigotry. I probably wouldn’t abhor myself as much as I do now if it weren’t for her. She talked down to me so much, detested me, disowned me, her own son. Because of her (and quite a few others that were in school with me) I have become rather hostile toward everyone around me. When I meet new people I take the approach of assuming they think I’m stupid or somehow lesser than them. Really, I have yet to find anyone that doesn’t think negatively of me.

One thing people don’t know about me is that I miss the ocean terribly. That salty body of water was pretty much the one thing that always remained constant other than all the negativity in my life and it was just about the only positive amidst all the negatives. I miss the waves – hearing them, watching them – and sticking my toes in the sand, sinking down with every wave that came. I miss the seagulls and their constant cawing, I miss the sand dollars, I miss the little crabs, I miss everything. I could always be myself on the shore and no one would criticize me or do anything to harm me. I was free and I’ll be damned if I never make it back to those sandy shores.

[ h i s t o r y ]

As you may imagine, growing up in a Career district where you’re expected to be the best was incredibly hard. I’ve been in this “strange” world for as long as I remember; no one else that I knew had this condition and so I felt completely and utterly isolated from the rest of humanity. Ever since I was probably a toddler, my patience with everything and everyone has been tremendously short and even with the simplest of things I would grow so frustrated that all I knew to do was cry. Hell, that was all I could even do was cry. Not to mention that my parents’ patience were wearing paper-thin. They didn’t understand what was wrong with me and so when I would try to communicate and let them know what was up, since I couldn’t speak, I would just grunt or squeak at them. That just really pissed them off. I remember them frequently just exploding at me: ”Use your damn words! Stop shaking like that! Why aren’t you doing your homework?” I would’ve if I could’ve but I couldn’t.

I hated being at home just as much as being at school. In both places I was constantly bullied and tormented by my peers; people avoided me and I didn’t take any particular interest in any of them, either, so I guess in a way it was mutual. But all their taunts – fuck, that did quite a bit of damage to me mentally.

My grades were always terrible and I never even bothered to try Career training. There would only be taunts and painful jests awaiting me at the training center so why would I willingly limp into a trap like that? But Mom and Dad still expected me to go, so I “went” and instead detoured every day to a remote part of the shoreline. There was an old dock there that I would sit on and just watch the waves and the seagulls, finding a sense of peace in nature that humanity so rudely deprived me of. Sometimes I even dare to think that being alone on the shore calmed my twitches and involuntary jerks and that little sliver of joy pleased me.

But, of course, all good things must come to an end. My parents found out about where I had been going when I was supposed to be at Career training and they wasted no time in scolding me, grabbing my arm and dragging me along. They also muttered their wishings for me to have fallen off the dock and drown, but I didn’t want to feed their desire by saying I had considered falling off the dock a few times. No, that would just encourage them.

There was this one other kid at school – Ridley, I think his name was. You see, I wasn’t the only strange one in the school. I must admit that I felt awful for thinking it but I was just glad I wasn’t the only one that people avoided. Because of this, I wanted to get to know this Ridley kid, but due to my lack of communication skills I couldn’t. I stayed back and just watched until the day he seemingly disappeared into thin air.

I didn’t really pay much attention to his disappearance since I had my own demons to deal with, most of whom were – and still are – in the human form. I continued to be a “burden” to my parents and my peers at school. Eventually, however, I had withstood all I possibly could and so I just dropped out of school – but that was just before the men with the nametags came.

They wasted no time in restraining me and didn’t even tell me who they were or what they were doing with me. Of course in times like those is when you look to your parents for security and I did just that: tried to claw my way across the wooden floor to them, but they just stared – and even smirked – as the men dragged me away, trying to suppress my squeaks and childish shrieks.

So now I live in this asylum hell and it’s basically the same tormenting ordeal but with different people and different scenery. I hate every single person in this building, including myself, and being trapped between these four ghost-white walls is slowly driving me insane. I need out – I need my ocean.