Prompt Shop Bop

"Good Enough" - Kataa

by Little Mix

"But these scars no longer I hide"

For the longest time, Kataa tried to hide all of the damage that her family's treatment caused her. Though they never physically attacked her - which isn't to say that Kataa never lashed out at them, because she definitely tried to claw Cleopatra more than once - their treatment left its marks all over Kataa. She didn't know how to function for the longest time; if she's being honest, she still doesn't completely know how to function within the pride, but she's learning. Kataa is done trying to win her mother's affection and pretending that Msaliti and the rest of her family are not cruel to her. She has been neglected and mistreated, something that she is finally coming to terms with, and Kataa is done hiding the effects of what they have done. She is not vocal enough to be telling everyone, just her closest friends that she knows she can trust, but Kataa is not cowering in front of her mother anymore, allowing herself to be trampled in some desperate hope that her mother might grow to love her. She has confronted her mother on her actions, standing her ground when Msaliti tried to twist the tables on her again, saying that this was why Cleo was the better daughter. Kataa knows better, and she is not going to fall for those lies anymore. Nothing she is going to do is going to be enough for Msaliti, and Kataa is done hiding just how much pain her family's actions have caused her.

"I found the light you shut inside"

For a time, Kataa wondered if she was irredeemable. When she was confronted by the fact that she was not a good person and that she was on a path to be the same as her mother, she grew distraught. She didn't want to be the same as the monster that raised her, but when she confronted herself on the matter, she found that she could even arguably worse. Kataa didn't even have a front of kindness that she hid behind; she showed no love to a world that she felt had showed her no love in kind. And yet, somehow, she had friends. Jasiri would talk to her when she instigated the conversation. Daraja didn't mind sparring with her. Slowly, Kataa realized that just because she had been hurt didn't mean that had to define her. Msaliti had shaped her to be one way, but Kataa had the power to change to be something other than what her mother had made her to be. If she had made friends, if there were those that could tolerate her, then there had to be some good in her. Even if it was deep down, it had to be in there somewhere; her mother couldn't have caused her to kill it completely. And, sure enough, with enough self-reflection and help from the few friends she had, Kataa was able to dig deep down to find the light inside herself. She was free to be whoever she wanted and free of the shadow that lurked over her that was her family's feelings towards her.

"Couldn't love me if you tried"

Even now, Kataa hasn't fully come to grips with one particular reality, but it is the undeniable truth: Msaliti doesn't love her, and she never will. None of her family will, but Msaliti was the one who should have loved her when no one else did. Her mother, the one who she was raised by, should have been the one that loved her no matter what. Instead, she was the one that detested Kataa the most. And after striving so long to gain her mother's love, to garner some form of affection from her, Kataa has come to realize that her mother can't love her. She is incapable of loving her own daughter, of treating her with the affection that any other mother would show their cub. It is not a pleasant thing, to come to realize that the one who gave birth to you will never be able to love you when all you've wanted for your entire life was for them to look at you with adoration, not hatred. She has felt despised for most of her life, has despised herself because of it. Kataa was so certain that it was something internal, something that she needed to fix so that she could get her mother's attention, but now, she is starting to stomach the truth: no matter what, Msaliti is never going to love her, because she can't love her. In fact, she isn't even a mother that Kataa should want the affection of when that is how she treated her for so much of her life.

"Am I still not good enough?"

Kataa still remembers saying those words to her mother. She said them so many times that they are practically ingrained in her mind. No matter what she did, she was never good enough. Whatever she did, Cleopatra always did it better. It became a fact of life for Kataa, but it's not one she has to accept. When she finally confronted her mother about the way she was treated by her ever since she could remember, Kataa asked it for the final time. Msaliti was unmoved, but Kataa got her answer. She was never going to be good enough; she would never impress her mother, no matter how much she strove to prove herself. She was not going to be good enough for her mother, never would be no matter how much she tried...and that was okay. It was a truth that Kataa struggled to come to terms with after that being her one goal in life for so long. But if her mother would not love her, that that was not a love she wanted anyways. She did not want to be good enough in the eyes of a lioness who rejected one daughter in favor of the other before either had even opened their eyes. Kataa was done trying to be good enough for Msaliti; instead, she would be good enough for herself, to become someone that she herself was proud of.