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Rehab is for quitters by Abbi van den Berg   
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Abbi van den Berg (6 November 1980 / East London, South Africa)
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Rehab is for quitters

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  Please, please
don’t give me a spade
because I will dig a hole with it
and don’t give me a mountain
of affection
because I will only bury myself in it

don’t be kind to me
because I am unable to appreciate it
don’t accept me the way I am
because I will point out
all my faults ad nauseam
to try and convince you
that I am unworthy

don’t be generous or sweet or gentle
because I have been damaged so badly
that my withered spirit
only understands pain
don’t climb over the barbed wire fence
of my bitterness
because I can build a new one
faster than you can tear it down

And please, please don’t love me
because I can’t bear the fact
that I know I will hurt you

But above all

Please
please
don’t
leave me

Because I couldn’t bear to live another day without you
It is only in the whirlwind of this
horror that I have created
that I realise how you have helped me to heal
(07-02-2005)

Abbi van den Berg

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  Comments about this poem (Rehab is for quitters by Abbi van den Berg )
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  Michael Shepherd  (2/7/2005 7:24:00 AM)

Abbit, you're writing to the largest audience of ex-teenagers and delayed adolescents (and, whisper, parents...) ever assembled on one site - about 5,000 of us all the time every day, that makes x times y bleeding hearts with the shredded Tshirt to prove it... We're with you every awful, awful step of the way. How did we ever live until today? Advice? I'll leave it to others... Sympathy? It's practically dissolving your screen...

Brilliant poem even if writ in blood.
  Herbert Nehrlich  (2/7/2005 7:24:00 AM)

Ad nauseam, by which I only refer to the spelling, also gentle might look better this way.
H
  Poetry Hound  (2/7/2005 7:11:00 AM)

Terrific poem title.

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11/26/2009 6:46:29 PM. #.34# You Are Here: Rehab is for quitters by Abbi van den Berg

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