Written and edited sometime in April of 2023
Note from the Author:
The Enemy is a free verse poem in my collection Pieces of Me, which was written as a final project for my creative writing grad class at Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi. Pieces of Me is a multi-genre collection of stories, poems, thoughts, observations, and more. Some of the pieces are nonfiction, some fiction, and some are something in between. The next couple of posts on this blog will be from this collection as a way to have more to post while I finish up some of my current WIPs, but because some of the pieces from the collection are in the process of being published in various places I will only be posting the pieces that I will not be submitting for traditional publication.
Perfect.
Do it right the first time.
Perfect.
Or don’t bother at all.
Perfect.
You shouldn’t need instructions,
Perfect.
Or practice.
PERFECT.
ENCOURAGEMENT IS FOR THE WEAK,
perfect.
validation, a lie.
P e r f e c t.
I f y o u c a n ‘ t y o u a r e n o t h i n g.
pErfECt.
yOU ArE wORSe ThaN NOThInG.
pEr fE Ct.
dO i t ri ght t h E fiRS t T im E.
pEr fE Ct.
Or do N’T Bo thE R at aL L.
The Monsters That Inspired The Enemy
Free-verse poetry is terrifying to me as a writer because most attempts I make at writing it feels like I’m constantly falling short when I compare my own work to the works of my peers or already established authors. But recently I’ve been reading “The Writing Experiment: Strategies For Innovative Creative Writing” by Hazel Smith, and in the first chapter Smith talks about playing with language. This idea of playing with words, how they sound, how they look, and all their different meanings, as a way to generate ideas really resonated with me when writing The Enemy. And though I am not 100% sure if this piece is actually any good it’s still very raw and real for me as someone who has always struggled with perfectionism and feeling like I’m always falling short.
With this piece I wanted to show the relationship I have with the concept of perfectionism. I’m not sure if I struggle with it because of my upbringing, or my neurodivergency, or maybe because I am a creative that values results and is still learning to enjoy the process. What I do know though is that the right hand side is a voice. Sometimes it’s my own voice, telling me I am not and never will be good enough unless I am perfect at what I’m trying to do. Other times it's the voice of the people in my life, sometimes teachers when I was growing up, other times friends or their parents, a lot of times even my own family.
When I was young that voice pushed me to be the best I could be—made me strive for the praise of those around me. But over time that voice pushed me past my breaking point, and slowly dragged me down until I couldn’t recognize what it meant to be perfect anymore. My experiences and struggles with perfectionism is one of the reasons why I chose to write it like this. The subtle visual changes snowballing into full on distortion mimics my journey with learning that the voice telling me I have to be perfect is not a friend but a foe.
In terms of form, I “play” with the word “perfect,” varying its typography and spacing because I wanted to enhance the impact of the words and create a visual representation of the inner turmoil that word represents for me. I wanted each line to become messier and messier because I feel like the intentional breaking and rewriting of the word disrupts the conventional flow of normal language, which I hope is successful in evoking a sense of unease and discordance. I’ve found that creatives tend to struggle a lot with perfectionism, especially writers, because there seems to be so many rules and conventions when it comes to making art. Even the movements that seek to eliminate that need for perfection tend to reinforce the idea that there is a right way and a wrong way to create art.
Another reason why I used the visual elements in the piece is that it acts as a visual representation for how I would perform it out loud. There’s something that happens to the written word when it is spoken out loud. Something either clicks or breaks when the words on the page are left hanging in the air. For this piece I know exactly how I would perform it. When practicing in my mind I start off soft, almost gentle. Slowly growing louder, angrier, messier, until I’m a screaming, stuttering, sobbing mess. Kind of like when you bottle up your feelings for so long and something happens to shake you up and all of a sudden everything just explodes. That’s what it felt like when I wrote this piece and what I feel like every time I re-read it.
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