Always Lacking, Never Good Enough

Born to serve, but never appreciated enough,
That was all I knew since I could remember,
All that happened in the time home was hell,
Where papa would come back and complain,
Of how my studies wouldn’t ever mean shit,
How marriage sounded way better than school,
How it was safer to leave and never come back,
And maybe I should have listened back then.

I was just a child programmed to please,
A child who only understood servitude at best,
One who never knew life beyond those walls.
I was just a child who hoped to be loved,
A child who pushed herself beyond limits,
One that only ever had to be invisible for them,
The child that was always, always lacking,
The child that would never be enough, ever.

Maybe I really did grow up a bitter child,
But growing up in a warzone could do that,
To a soul that was trained to not love herself,
A soul that had wishes that seemed ridiculous,
Even when it was just a wish to be enough,
And yet Santa seemed to sleep on my wishes,
Never granting so much as a smile on Christmas,
Yet so quick to deliver sorrows at my tiny door.

Be better was all Papa and Mama could say,
That is not enough, was all my siblings spoke of,
Stay vigilant and be alert, society would insist,
But I was just a child in need of a loving home,
A child desperate for a family that cared,
But they were never there; always absent,
And I had to be the better person, the bigger one,
The selfless one always considered selfish.

All I ever wanted was to be enough for you,
To be loved like you loved the other kids,
To be seen like you saw my siblings,
To be held close like you held them too,
But it was never in the cards for you, was it?
Was that why I had to be the struggler,
The one who begged for scraps of affection,
The one who would never be enough?

Family shouldn’t have been the one to break,
And yet you lined up to break my heart,
To remind me that nothing I did would do shit,
That nothing would ever be sufficient,
Even if I broke my back and offered myself up,
Perhaps that was why I had to step back,
‘coz for you, I was always never enough.