Do you know that voice, always yelling at you? That voice from inside your head? The voice yells the worst insults.
Try to fight it, but you'll never win, because the voice knows all of your weaknesses. It's made by your worst enemy, you can never defeat.
Yourself.
Try to ignore, but the voice is sneaky, and will come at the most unexpected moments. It will break through the silence. To break you.
Try to escape, but the voice will always follow you, wherever you go. And it will never stop, until you break under the pressure.
Try to stay strong, but the voice keeps yelling until you start to believe.
The voice is done when all the lies become truths. Then the scariest part begins, when the voice stops yelling and starts whispering:

"You aren't good enough."

Do you hear that voice too?

Perfectionism's fine dancer
I am no more

That is not what I was put on this earth for

I am not here
to ace every test,
to always get 100,
to always be the best.

I am here to experience
Life's ups and downs
To fall flat on my face
To fall ******* the ground

To make mistakes
But still learn
To discover who I really am
For that I truly yearn

Life is not linear
It should not be overthought
Trying to perfect it
Your brain starts to rot

Depression sinks in
Lose yourself in a fog
Lose joy, lose yourself
in a suffocating smog.

Alas I surrender
I shall fight no more
A world with so much to find
So much more to explore.

She thought she had it all figured out.
Biology and psychology, with no doubts.

But alas
Her greatest fear
Became a reality
In third year

Trying to change
the meds she was on
Sent her in a spiral
Her personality was gone.

Crumbling into tears
Each and every day
Not understanding
How things could turn out this way

The world seemed dull
Full of despair
She couldn't concentrate
Every breath a gasp for air

She questioned the point
of university at all
Questioned her program
Her world became small

Thankfully her parents
Lent a caring hand
They were the only ones
Who could sort of understand

Things are improving
Slowly I'm afraid
Still questioning her program
And the decisions she has made.

Veering off the pursuit of perfection
One goal still in mind
To make it through undergrad
Further aspirations left behind.

I am wading through some murky waters
That I have yet to understand
With sludge so thick and deep enough
It keeps me from dry land

Still, I try to power through
While keeping you all informed
Though this barrage of wanting to know
Is leaving me quite scorned

All I hear is "you have run out of patience"
And "surely I understand"
Well No, I do not, I am always compliant
Especially to a brutish hand

Throughout the years I have kept in line
And played the dutiful role
But shaking hands with Father Time
Permitted my mind to **** my soul

At times the struggle is so intense
That I cannot catch my breath
I strain and gasp to choke it down
Knowing you expect nothing less

By pulling rank, you shut me down
And add weight to my fear and doubt
You fail to see that I am grown
A mother who has earned her clout

Assumptions can be cruel you see
We both have made our share
I hope my voice of honesty
Helps us to finally clear the air

You are an added link in a long chain
That is weathered but still intact
Now, I am asking out of respect of that bond,
Let us please breathe before we act

If my work were my child
It’d be the middle one
In between my perfectionism, the elder
And my self-loathing, the younger

I phone up inspiration
To help with the troublesome kid
But she never returns my calls anymore

Motivation, I haven’t spoken to in ages
She left when my insecurities
Got the better of me
Said I’d become a pathetic husk of a man

Look at me
I don’t even have the energy to rhyme
Better toss this one on the pile
With the rest of them

What’s the pile, you ask?
It’s where I keep all my
No-effort narratives
Forgotten frivolities
Miserable musings
Worthless writings
Inadequate ideas
Laughable lines
Soulless stories
Cold chapters
Terrible titles
Bad books
Garbage

The pile is large
And it only gets larger
As time progresses
Because the quality
of something I write
Quickly regresses

you continue on the outermost experience of stimuli
consuming with poor digestion, your surrounding world
you continue on the premise of emotion and nothing more,
no analysis, no insight, you exist as a simpler species than
those who do analyze, are insightful and it is only negative because
you are inefficient and infectious in your inefficiency, less energy is
required to live as you do but you are not progressive, you do not offer
this human species anything but a vector for dna, an avenue to perpetuate;
and you are this way by choice -- you possess potential to have potential
but you do not engage and in consequence, you are ignorant and malignant
to our human species and perhaps I am a misanthrope or perhaps I am a
realist but you will only hinder the most capable of us unless you cease to
continue on the outermost experience of stimuli; you are inefficient with the
potential, a resounding potential, for efficiency and if only you would wake from
this superficial condition our species would gain advantage in survival but I
suppose it is irrational to wish for such things, as we are inherently flawed and

perhaps our concentrations should not be on perpetuating the human species
but rather giving rise to an organism more evolutionarily advanced -- more efficient;
more perfect.