They’ve written books about me
Binary tomes that fill servers across the country
Each episode written by a stranger
Telling you who I am
It doesn’t matter you’ll never read them
Just the headlines for today
Alcoholic, Leg ulcer, GERD, PD
So many labels that you’ve lost sight of me
You sit in front of me and say “this is the first time we’ve met”
That’s a lie that you tell yourself
Already I’m in a box with the rest of them
A proforma waiting for the blanks to be colored in
But I’ve met you before as well
The same mask of soothing smile and attentive eye
Wanting me to unpack my trauma
Before giving me green slips to redirect my baggage
The next question is about my father
They tell me that’s why I have issues with control
Thirty years of my life defined by a man I can’t remember
A life reduced to one word “abuse”
He’s described as my Frankenstein
But he was a Mariner passing on his albatross
Now I carry it fearing who will inherit it next
A modern day Sisyphus
But that’s not what you expect
You expect the coarseness and the rough
To fit with your stereotype of who I am
And what kind of patient would disappoint
Now you give me advice
Exerting control on the chaos of my life
No medicine to turn back time
Or stop the march of entropy
Finished with me you turn away
Putting the final touches to my biography
Ushering me out the door with a smile
You hope this is your last chapter in my story
A world blind to the books on every corner
A sea of faces that make me feel more alone
A life resolved in a line of black and white
A footnote in another forgotten story
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Patrick, Y. A Paper Man. J Med Humanit 41, 259–260 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-019-09552-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-019-09552-2