#jesus im glad i didn't try to contain this in the tags

[yinwaryuri]

Honestly, Pat's reaction is portrayed more realistically than I think most people understand. It's so real it's that hard to watch, it has a lot of people going, "well why is he being like this?"

Pat has been on his own for who knows how long. By a lot of social standards he's actually pretty isolated, and due to numerous experiences (his relationship with Put, his parents' divorce), has lived with a sense that he's unlovable for reasons he can't name. Yes, he has friends but they're all in very different stages of life and when you really think about it, he has no true best friend. Ae is close but she's older than him, and while a wonderful ally cannot provide the same companionship as a fellow queer. Jaab is more friend than coworker, but he's not Pat's go-to. Chot (bless his entire existence) was introduced only a few episodes in and while it's refreshing to see Pat have a confidant and queer sister, it hasn't solidified into the kind of friendship that takes years to nurture.

Solitude breeds loneliness and loneliness can cast dark shadows about your self worth in your head. I'm no one with authority to say what Pat has is depression, but I would say based on my own (very recent) experiences with it and a pretty serious breakdown caused by it, that he's definitely come close several times throughout this narrative.

But Pat is a pleaser. He cannot be frank when it counts often times. Whenever he is, it takes a great deal of courage and emotional energy (or lots of drinking) and then he's spent. The alternative is that he either breaks down on the spot or holds it in until he can fall apart in private. And he holds in A LOT. And he comes across as awkward or stiff or overly apologetic because he's using half his energy to suppress the massive weight that wants to burst through his entire being.

Jeng has learned this about him and has come to take it much more gracefully than he did in the beginning (hearing him ask why Pat couldn't control his emotions made me wanna smack him ngl). But Jeng has been using half of his own energy to keep his hands off Pat because he is aware of the consequences (increasingly less so, but he is aware). That, paired with him being closeted for the better part of Pat's career as his employee, creates a terrible cocktail of misreadings and misdirection for both of them.

So when Pat realizes that this man - whom he's been trying not to crush on, trying to please professionally (because he's been reprimanded and pressured by him), trying to deny clear signs from - this man is also gay? No, that isn't some happy thing. Because now he's wondering what it means.

Every word Jeng has ever said to him from the beginning to the present is repeating in his head. Every gesture, every invitation, every situation they've ever gotten into. The way Jeng made himself change because Pat's upset review stung so much, and how focused he's been on Pat since then is all suspect now. The unconsciously in love warm fuzzy butterflies in his stomach have lost their flight.

Pat's relationship with Put was very, very subtly manipulative. The whole thing with Sharkie (ugh. Sharkie.) and how he hid behind this memento of their past love like a shield demonstrated how he knew he hadn't truly changed. Now, Put is not an asshole or an abuser - he was not intentionally messing with Pat's feelings and he truly did care about him. He just continued to prioritize himself and his own feelings, and it did numbers on Pat because he would give in and give in until he was emotionally drained. That's what sucked the life out of their love the first time, and it's what reminded Pat of why they broke up the second time.

So with Jeng? Someone from a completely different part of society altogether? Also his boss? It doesn't matter how many pleasant experiences Pat has had with him - he suddenly is faced with someone who could very well be toying with him more purposefully. He's just a poor, lonely subordinate, whose emotional regulation skills are held together with tape and Elmer's glue, who can't properly cook so he eats out all the time, who has been looked down on by numerous people in high society including the man who has been taking him out all the time and just came out as gay. And Pat has buried his crush on him deep in a chest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which has now spat itself back up. The emotional toll is so much that the structure just... collapses. Pat physically collapses as a result. And then he emotionally shuts down.

And folks lemme tell you, that shut down is real hard to talk about, if you physically can. The numbness is indescribable because there are very few words for it. How do you explain a lack of sensation when all you're used to is everything going on inside you all the time? How do you regulate nothing? How do you explain that feeling + feeling just cancelled everything out?

He asks Jeng how he could like him because he doesn't like himself at that moment. It doesn't make sense to him because he is too aware of all his failings and shortcomings. He is also too aware of how different they are in both personality and class. And most of all he knows he's had feelings for Jeng but he's buried them deep under the many reasons there couldn't and shouldn't be anything between them. While it's heartbreaking to watch him reject Jeng, it's just as sad to hear him basically confess how little he thinks he's worth.

Pat has lost his senses so totally by then, he forgets his birthday, and his parents visiting him, and work, and all he can do is dwell on who was he? Who was he before he became a husk of bones and flesh? He focuses on memories, both good and bad, because he felt like a person then. He felt human. He FELT. And when he finally realizes how much he misses being himself and feeling and thinking he's worth anything, as well as how much he truly likes Jeng, he finally can voice what is eating him up inside and let it out.

Pat’s breakdown was super relatable

Jeng crying was the best and the worst and I love what the show did even if it hurt so much to see him break down like that. 

However as an unconscious emotional compartmentalizer myself, Pat’s breakdown was CRAZY relatable and I can’t think about anything else. 

He went from unconsciously in love 

To actively numb to his own emotions

To confused and disbelieving

To breaking the fuck down

and it HURT ME

When your emotions hit you like this, and the romantic one’s they’re such strong emotions, when they hit you unprocessed because you’ve been unconsciously completely ignoring them, because they’re about someone you CAN’T HAVE. 

Fuck

I need a minute