Looking for My Patrick? Funny You Should Ask

Finding love where it matters most, with or without music and "Schitt’s Creek."

“You think the TV and music and all that have something to do with why people are confused about love?”

“YES!”

--From a skit on Lauryn Hill’s album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1998

I know I am not the only person whose awareness of love, or some idea of it, has been informed, if not structured, by pop culture. 

In my case, it’s love songs across a range of genres–not just R&B. For others, it can be Disney movies, soap operas, advertising, romantic comedies, pornography, and any number of popular media texts that convince many a consumer that what we really need is an ideal of love and sex that may not exist.

For me, though, growing up hearing pop of the 1960s and ‘70s and being a hyper-literal thinker as autistic meant that I internalized a lot of ideas of what love is from the radio. The longing and yearning in records by the so-called girl groups (RIP Ronnie Spector), British Invasion acts, and Motown stars of the time made for some classic music while utterly distorting my perceptions of healthy relationships.

Decades after hearing that music, I can still travel, as I did a couple years ago, and meet someone who’s unavailable and, after one conversation, come home with a wedding song in mind, regardless of the song’s era.

Of course, it’s not only pop culture–or external forces generally–that have shaped my ideas of healthy love and sexuality. I have made plenty of excursions into the dating world that ended in heartbreak, and I’ve certainly played a part in those disasters.

So, I was drawn to the phenomenal, Emmy-winning success of the TV series Schitt’s Creek not just because of everyone saying how great it is, but because of dating apps.

As a gay man, I was very curious when I saw a number of men saying, “Looking for my Patrick,” referring to David’s partner on the show, on their profiles.

I admit, watching the first several episodes of Schitt’s Creek, I hated it, finding the show classist and not funny. But later coming back and witnessing substantial character development, like many, I was won over.

I related most to David’s neurotic, hyper-anxious disposition. Dan Levy’s portrayal highlights many things I struggle with: David is also un-athletic, confused by metaphors–including with how often he says, “I don’t know what that means”–and dense with romantic signals. 

With me, I struggle with these issues as autistic, though, of course, not every autistic person has similar struggles.

But I have plenty of stories of missing social cues, including with guys hitting on me. A few years ago, working at a bookstore, I walked a guy over to the Manga section. He turned and looked at me and said, “I’m Dan,” to which I responded by looking down at the hand I was shaking, rather than in his eyes.

“Let’s try that again,” he said. The same thing happened. Oops.

As much as I look back on moments like that and ask myself, “What were you thinking?” I have learned compassion for and acceptance of my issues with nonverbal communication as an autistic person.

Perhaps a foil to my hyper-anxious autistic tendencies, including a lot of pacing, the character Patrick, played by Noah Reid, could be an ideal guy for me: calmer, seemingly more confident, and more stereotypically masculine than I am. So, it would be very easy to project that character onto a fantasy of what I want in life.

But today, I can gratefully say that I don’t feel the need to be “looking for my Patrick”—even though I’m single.

I’ve never had great luck with dating. My longest relationship to date was five months, a fact that I don’t blame myself for–they all had run their course–but it can still feel depressing.

In recent months, I talked with a friend about our dating lives, and I realized I was in a strange predicament. My friend said, “What happened to that guy that talked too much?”

“Which one?” I replied.

I love to talk, so on one hand, if I’m doing far more listening than talking, that’s great, but if a guy is overtaking the conversation, I’ll pass on that.

For me, though, “looking for my Patrick” in the search for love has a whole different meaning, but one that ended up helping to heal a broken heart.

* * *

Eleven years ago, I was desperately unhappy. I had been living in my hometown for several months and didn’t feel capable of not reliving eighteen years of painful memories growing up, including finding out in college that people close to me had been binge eating and struggling with their demons because they found it too painful to watch me getting bullied and abused at school without anything being done about it.

On May 5, 2011, I remember arriving on my college campus from just a few months before. Having never touched alcohol as an adult, choosing to not mess with different medical issues, I was planning to mix pills and alcohol in the hopes that I would die. I didn’t know how to open the bottle of alcohol, so instead, I ran into traffic and somehow survived physically unscathed. I suspect some greater force in the universe was looking out for me that night.

Two nights later, I saw a friend named Patrick, who knew that I liked him and felt guilty about it, sitting on the front steps of a college house drinking a bottle of alcohol. I had written him a letter several months prior that I thought he was beautiful and that I felt ugly when I saw him. We’d never discussed it.

He must have sensed that I was feeling awful, whether or not he knew about my suicide attempt, and I remember him getting up and saying he wanted to talk to me. We had only had one extended conversation up to that point, so I was quite unprepared for what happened next.

I’ll never forget him putting his arm around me and telling me how loved I was and how I had deserved a standing ovation from hundreds of people at graduation from a year earlier. And I’ll never forget me saying, in tears, “You don’t think I’m ugly?” and him saying, “No, you’re beautiful! And I love you, lots and lots.” 

I’m crying right now just thinking about it. At the end of our walk, I remember kissing him on the shoulder of his shirt. Without even knowing it, Patrick saved my life. He was the last person I ever expected to care like that, especially after all the times I had been called “faggot” growing up for liking guys.

That’s my Patrick. And especially when I was severely mentally ill for fifteen months a few years later, I was obsessed with that walk with him, wishing to recover and relive such a beautiful moment. 

But I’m not looking for my Patrick anymore.

It took a few years to be able to talk about it with anyone. But after I started admitting to myself and others what he did for me, I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I’ve sometimes worried that I need to shut up about it, and others have told me, “Never shut up about it!” because of the need to break down the stigma associated with mental illness.

Today, so much has changed. While, at thirty-three, I would love to have someone to spend my life with, more strongly, I feel satisfied with who and where I am. I don’t need anyone else to make me happy.

* * *

When I heard Adele’s “Someone Like You” in 2011, it immediately made me think of my friend who saved my life. But I don’t need someone like him, or like myself. I only need me. 

Obviously, I’m incredibly lucky to have someone like Patrick in my life, and I don’t need him or anyone else, available or not, to fulfill such a role.

It took years to feel this way. What changed for me was starting a path of spiritual recovery to work to do things differently than I used to.

Though I initially came to it during a period of deep despair and uncertainty, this path has changed my life for the better. I’m not making claims that it would or would not help anyone else. I just know it works for me. 

Initially I worked on layers of addictive behaviors, but I dug deeper into my issues in ways that helped me avoid medicating feelings in ways that are unhealthy for me.

In the process I was able to let go of some of my grudges and feelings of victimhood, as well as my rationalizing of why I used different processes to medicate.

I was able to uncover parts of myself that I didn’t think existed by working to be useful to others. Service in different capacities is a big part of my life today. Working to be more selfless gave me more compassion for the parts of me that aren’t giving, that are selfish.

And I learned to accept myself, much more than I ever had.

I have worked especially hard on my relationships, including with myself. I sometimes struggle with self-care, but I do much more work around that than I used to. 

I go to bed every night saying, “I love you, Josh.” That feels like a hard-earned victory.

Of course, watching Schitt’s Creek, as much as I, too, would love for a partner to dedicate a song to me at an open mic, like Patrick sings Tina Turner’s “The Best” to David, I don’t need anyone else to sing to me or for me to sing to.

I do, however, want the world to know how lucky I am to be alive and thriving–initially, it seemed, because of my friend Patrick. I don’t need a partner to feel so lucky.

* * *

After watching the finale of Schitt’s Creek–during which I did cry, thank you very much, watching David and Patrick’s wedding–I immediately texted my best friend, Adam, about the song on the credits, a longtime favorite of ours: “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies. As friends, music is the greatest love language we have.

And while I hope to share that love language in some capacity with a partner someday, the greatest gift I have in my life today is that I am recovering my true self and learning to love myself for who I am: quirks, non sequiturs, #literalproblems (as I call them on Twitter), and all. I have a lot to offer the world, and if people, including dates, don’t like me and my autism, I refuse to beat myself up for their ignorance.

I used to think that when I met the love of my life, the “theme song” of the moment would be Tracy Chapman’s gorgeous “At This Point in My Life,” about a person who feels broken, learning to open up and trust someone.

Today I embrace the uncertainty of not having a theme song or a love of my life in my immediate vision.

Like David on Schitt’s Creek, I’ve had “a long string of bad luck,” with a hefty dose of mistakes I’ve made. But at this point, my tentative choice of theme song may sound resigned, but I hear it differently now.

Joni Mitchell’s classic “Both Sides Now” is one of my favorite songs ever, but today I hear it as embracing uncertainty: “I’ve looked at love from both sides now/ From give and take and still somehow/ It’s love’s illusions I recall/ I really don’t know love/ At all.”

Whether love’s illusions are from pop culture or any other source, I’m okay with the uncertainty in not knowing an ideal of love at all–anymore.

I don’t obsess about my friend Patrick the way I used to. I love myself more than I ever have–in a contented, real way that doesn’t have to involve feeling euphoric and high. I have plenty of hard days, especially in this pandemic, but I know I’m okay no matter what. 

I do, however, still obsess about love songs. Whether it’s Alison Krauss’s version of “When You Say Nothing at All” or Otis Redding’s performance of “Try a Little Tenderness,” I feel these records deeply, even if I have no one else to live them out or dance to them with–or sing or play them to.

I can live them out as I’m singing them to myself, though, which has proven surprisingly powerful for internalizing that I am worthy of love and acceptance from myself and others.

Spiritual recovery helped me get there. And as I’ve discussed elsewhere, music has played a major role in my recovery.

I can listen to a song like Natalie Merchant’s “Kind and Generous” and think about myself, and Patrick, “I never could have come this far without you.”

Or I hear the live version of Sarah McLachlan’s “Good Enough” on her CD Mirrorball, which reminds me that Patrick showed me why I was “so much more than good enough.” I think I’ve followed that lead and taken it over for myself in the last several years.

Or I can blast a contemporary country classic like Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying.” Damn, do I know what that song feels like since I almost died and get to live my truth every day.

Or, in the spirit of wedding songs, I hear Rascal Flatts’s “Bless the Broken Road” and know that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to . . . me. And I’m okay with that.

* * *

After over a decade since that moment with my friend Patrick, I am scheduled to chair a big spiritual recovery event this year. My work has been useful to others, which makes me beyond happy.

Last night, though, I had a moment that I could never take for granted. 

I said to myself, “I love you, lots and lots.”