Perfectly Imperfect (Affirmation)

I used to say "I'm working on it."
It's progress not perfection.
But at every new inspection
you found something else to loathe.
Something stupid that I said,
the way I threw around my clothes,
or the way I made the bed.
How I was loud or aggressive,
or too weak to be assertive,
or too thin and scrawny
with my face all hollowed and
homely, or too fat and chunky.

Your assessments harmed me.

These judgements cut me through
because I took them for my own
and gave them edges that I honed
to ruthless blades that sliced my soul.
That empty chasm in my core
was always crying out for more.

More of anything, everything.

The shrill, demanding howl
of that hunger will take
anything and everything.

And it did.

Your contempt was it's nutrition
and I fed it as a mission.
All the while apologizing,
still working, still revising,
still overhauling me
toward what you
thought I should be.

But not today.

I always said I was working on it.
All those defects you despised,
the tremored jaw and weepy eyes,
the bold affront that always hides
the frightened, needful thing inside.
Yet, you still found me insufficient.
I worked too hard, too often
chasing redemption and begged
for your patience, for your
needed affirmation.

I didn't have any of my own.

But not today.

Eventually, I had a radical idea-

That these frantic, fevered feedings
would never slake the hunger or
fill the emptiness that thundered
through my grieving being.

What it needed was simple weaning,
not another vicious beating,
not alcohol or the needle,
not the sex or acquisition,
not your dump trucks full of
seething, contempt and
condemnation.

I thought that day-

I don't know where the doubt began
but the mutagen of fear and the
paradox of need became that raging,
hateful hole...

The more I fed the emptiness,
the more distant I became.

I never thought to wean it and leave it
on it's own, to let it shrivel back in folds,
an evaporated hell.

While I was engaged outside myself, I was
freed of constant self-reflection and your
critical inspection, the emptiness receded.

Today I am not working on it
because I do not need repair.
There's nothing broken here
and I am just as I should be.

Perfectly, imperfect me.

~Feel free to shoot my a$$. I don't know why I have rhymes stuck in my damn head~