Imperfections / Atelophobia

The beautiful melody floods the room.

It’s the kind that even if you have never heard it before, you know every note that comes next. It’s the only one that would feel correct. It finds its way into everyone’s soul the way sunlight finds its way into a dark, cold room. The peace this melody brings is almost tangible. My mind is connected to a serene island as if bound by a thread, and I know that this feeling is shared by everyone here.

But I feel the thread snap.

It’s not supposed to snap. This piece has barely begun. Panic spills into me, and I feel the shock of everyone around me.

The music stops, and my eyes flutter open. I’m sitting in front of a grand piano at what can only be described as the most prestigious music competition. The audience is to my right, and the judges seem to be pulled out of their trance as they lean forward slightly. I think I hear pen scratching on paper, and the gentle murmur among the audience fills my ears.

I have made a mistake. I've blundered in front of the most musically perfect people in the world. My hands are shaking as I watch them pick up my bottle of water, stand up, and exit backstage. I hear the murmur continue after I’ve left, and one of the judges finally picks up his microphone and calls in the next contestant.

I collapse onto the floor of the small, dark room after I have put some distance between myself and the exit, and my hair, which has become too long, falls like a curtain around me. My hands take my glasses to the floor next to me, and immediately return to cover my face. I hear ragged breathing, which I take to be my own, and my hands soon become drenched. 

I’ve made two mistakes tonight. The first was playing the wrong note. The second was walking away from my first mistake. Despite the knowledge that I should, I can never seem to recover from my mistakes fast enough. Why did I make the first mistake? I practiced until my fingers hurt. Every single day for months, without fail. Was it not enough? Should I have kept going? My core is shaken by all of the what-ifs, and I can’t bear to be in this room any longer.

I feel my legs take me along the long path home and straight to my bed where I wish for a dreamless slumber.

My wish is not fulfilled. I dream of a man with a single, coin-sized stain on his otherwise perfect white shirt; his face isn’t clear, but that’s not where my focus lies. He opens a kitchen cabinet to pick up a cup for the tea he has made for himself, and the cabinet is perfectly organized except for a single cup that is in between two perfect rows of cups. In an attempt to alleviate this imperfection, the man wraps his hands around that cup and lowers it onto the counter, where he begins to pour the tea into it. 

As he does so, his mood shifts to horror as he realizes that he has a very important meeting today that he completely forgot to prepare for. 

This abrupt realization makes him spill the boiling tea onto his own hand, which he withdraws quickly in response, accidentally knocking over the imperfect cup. The cup shatters as it hits the floor, and the absolute silence until this point is interrupted by the sound of my own voice whispering “No” over and over again.

I wake up shaking. My eyes are wide, my breathing is irregular, and I’m sweating. The man’s cabinet will never be perfect again, because now a cup is missing, never to be replaced.

My hands push my plain blue comforter off of my body, and I’m off the bed now. I watch my hands fix and smoothen the comforter and straighten the pillow, and feel myself enter the kitchen and attempt to make tea to make up for the man’s mistake. Unlike in his, there are no imperfections in my cup cabinet. I don’t spill any tea, either, thankfully.

When my cup becomes empty and my stomach becomes happier, my eyes find their way to my calendar, which also contains my day-to-day schedule. It seems I agreed to explore the city more with a friend, planned two weeks in advance. 

After a shower, the clothes that I picked out a few days ago find themselves on me: a white shirt (no stains) with blue jeans. Thirty two minutes later (much to my dismay that the number is not divisible by five), at exactly 9:00am, I find myself at my friend’s doorstep. I hear the door unlock, and my friend steps out of his apartment right as I arrive. He remembered my desire for perfection, and he’s never been late to anything involving me ever since he found out. I smile at this, and we embark on our exploratory journey like tourists in our own city.

As we walk around the crowded streets, my anxiety levels rise bit by bit. The woman who just walked past me was wearing a hoodie with uneven drawstrings. The little boy who was running to catch up to a slightly older girl, who I assume to be his sister from how similar they look, has rolled one of his pant legs up to a little above his ankle, but the other hovers around the base of his shoe. A man leaving a building a few feet away from us is wearing a suit, and his tie is tilted.

But as we keep walking, something else catches my attention. A girl of around eighteen walks past us, and she’s almost bouncing with every step. She’s wearing a black skirt with a matching top, but I’m looking at her shoes. They’re simple white platform shoes, but they have this graffiti-like design on them that etches itself into my memory. It’s irregular, and the colors seem almost random and unplanned. It’s not perfect in any way. It’s exactly the type of product I would steer clear of. I wait for the trapped feeling. I wait for the I’m-bothered-by-this feeling.

I wait.

And wait.

But it doesn’t come. Instead, I’m filled with joy at how imperfect yet beautiful it is. It’s intricate but vague at the same time. It sounds crazy, but it really feels like the design flooded my world with color, and I almost see more clearly now. For the first time, I admire its imperfections. It’s unpredictable, but in a positive-tinted way. 

My friend notices where my gaze is pointing, and he immediately abandons our plan to explore the city. Instead, we walk for twenty-two minutes (it’s not divisible by five, but surprisingly, that doesn’t quite bother me right now), and he leads me to a building nearby that looks like it has been abandoned for years now. 

The paint on its walls is chipping, but we ignore it as we head up the too-steep stairs. Once we reach the top, he smiles at me and opens the door to the roof. 

Immediately, I’m awestruck. Covering the boundary walls is graffiti of a hundred different styles. Different handwritings, different fonts, different designs. It’s unpredictable and unorganized and imperfect. Exactly what I would hate-- but I don’t hate this. It’s dazzling. It puts my heart at ease. 

It’s not like I’ve never seen graffiti before. Living in this city, I’ve seen it plenty of times. I just never really gave it much thought, I guess. Sometimes you walk past things and acknowledge them, but you don’t really think about them, you know? That’s how it was with me and graffiti.

As I walk around the rooftop (yes, I walk, I’m not just feeling my legs carry me around the place), I’m filled with blissful joy. I love it.

Suddenly, I’m struck with an idea. One that I love immediately. I mentally make a plan for the next few months.

. . . . ONE YEAR LATER . . . .

I wake up from a dreamless sleep at 6:37am. As good a time to awaken as any. After brushing my teeth, eating a quick breakfast, and taking a shower, I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. Sales are up this month, and it seems everyone is wearing the latest product I released.

Confused? Let me explain. After the rooftop enlightenment, I learned that imperfections aren’t always bad. Sometimes, things can be unpredictable and messy-- but that can be beautiful. 

The friend who brought me to the rooftop helped me channel my love for such designs into clothes, shoes, and accessories. Together, we opened our own brand. Unlike how I liked to do things at the time, we jumped right into it. No careful planning, no worrying. We designed what we liked, and released it to the public. Simple.

I know what you’re thinking. “What? How could anything ever be successful with no serious planning?” Sometimes, I realized, you don’t have to worry. You can trust yourself and your work, and if you’re doing it out of passion and for yourself rather than for the consumer, I think you’re doing it right.

We opened our brand because it gave us happiness. It wasn’t because we thought we could “make it big.” 

But we did. It’s a full time profession now. 

And I’m loving it.

. . . . ONE (MORE) YEAR LATER . . . .

Tranquility washes over the room as the first note plays. 

The world seems to have paused to allow the melody to play, and even the crying infants go silent as the tune plays. Everyone is listening, invested in the stories the notes are sharing.

But the stories hit a sudden halt. 

An unexpected twist? Not quite. The stories seem to have gone wrong. The melody is interrupted by a note that sounds wrong with the rest of the song.

After the brief pause, the stories continue again; however, this time, they’re different.

A new chapter has opened with a flawless transition. The peace is replaced with a strong sense of action. The journey has become adventurous. The entire room feels the ups and downs of the melody as the notes sing their new stories.

As the melody approaches its end, every mind in the room goes blank, pure focus on the musical tale.

As I play the final note, I feel the smile of my dear friend, who knows the musical story wasn’t supposed to be an action novel.

The applause of the audience fills my ears.

. . . . fin. . . . .