No amount of your love can cure me.
No amount of your love,
or your time,
or your effort can fix me.
You cannot drive my demons away
because my demons are me,
and I am my demons.
I am not conditional.
I do not come with a contract,
and I won't sign on the dotted line
where I promise to get better.
You can't pick and choose parts of me.
I am a package deal,
boxed in depression
with a bow of anxiety and OCD.
Love me,
please,
but don't think you can cure me.
This is the first draft of the poem. I'll edit it as reviews come in, so expect it to go through a lot of changes.
Footnote: I am aware that mental illness is obviously treatable, and I am currently being treated for mine. This poem does not refer to treatment by therapy or medication, both of which are excellent methods for treating mental illness.
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139,524 Literary Works • 672,598 Reviews
Hello, queerelves! I'm emeraldfox, representing Team EarthBenders this Review Day!
I thought this piece was excellent! I could relate to this a lot because I struggle with anxiety and my dad doesn't accept that too well and gets very frustrated when I can't interact with people as well as most can or I get worked up about things too much. I like how you talked about how others have to accept ALL of us, not just the parts they want. The metaphor of mental illness being a package deal was great because it showed the idea that others can't just take some parts of you and leave the rest, they have to love it all. Your meter was very strong. Your use of punctuation added to the poem a lot. Finally, you did not have any errors with spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.
I didn't have any corrections to make because I can tell you take the time to edit your works before you post them and that helps a lot!
This was phenomenal and it definitely needs a like! I hope you write some more poetry soon because I love reading and reviewing your poems!
"YWS is blue,
Our team is green.
We're the best reviewers
You've ever seen."
-@pendr for Team Earthbenders
Wow.
I have five minutes so I'm making this quick.
I love this concept because I can relate. This captures the entirety of what I suppose most people with depression and anxiety feel. We want people to love us, but they can't fix us. We honestly have to do that ourselves. And I like how you said you are your demon. It's so true I can't even! (Lol.)
Amazing like usual! Keep writing these amazing works!
-Kamryn
Hello, Chips here to review!
This seems like a personal poem, not the happiest of subjects but nevertheless it came from an emotional place.
I think this had a great voice to it and it was a simple and direct message to understand. However there are suggestions I'd like to make to you.
I felt there was a lot of repetition and similar use of phrasing which became quite bland to read as it lost effect.
"No amount of your love can cure me.
No amount of your love,"
Here, using almost the same wording so early on in the opening isn't the most ideal and the opening should be the most attention grabbing section for the reader, to read on. Instead of saying, "amount" how about you give a level or a measurement or use imagery to create the extent for more emphasis.
"You cannot drive my demons away
because my demons are me,
and I am my demons."
This basically felt like the same sentence, just worded in different ways. Maybe use one of the lines and expand on the "demons" you feel.
I think more descriptions, elaborations and imagery would greatly help your poem to reach its full potential, subjects such as these should be powerful and effective. You could also use metaphors to express this state rather than explaining it too directly.
Overall a nice piece, Hope I was of help to you.
--Chips
Hi, queerelves!
Firstly, I'd like to suggest that you single space your poem. On YWS, you have to hold shift when you enter down to a new line. If you want a new stanza, simply leave shift untouched. ^_^
The message is very serious, and I don't want to say that I like the message because I wish that you could cure mental illness with love, but it is true, and I like that it is true. If you get my feel.
I think, however, that you don't have to reveal your intentions so early in the poem. Sometimes it is a good thing to do that, but in this case, the message is so simple and true that it needs some padding in front of it so it doesn't stab anyone. I think this would do well as a more narrative poem. What brought up this issue? Show us what the narrator is feeling. Right now, I don't know if the narrator is angry or sad or wistful or what in this poem. Show us.
I feel like a couple of your lines are kind of redundant. I would delete the following lines due to redundancy.
I also suggest that you use more imagery. Doing as I suggested above, and making it a narrative poem will probably help that, but as it is, we don't really have any imagery other than the "package deal" and signing the dotted line. Show, don't tell. Telling the other person that none of their effort can fix you is nice, but it isn't showing us what effort the other person has already put into the narrator. I'd like to see that. What made the narrator say these things to the other person.
Altogether, I like the truth of what you're getting at, but show, don't tell, and add some kind of introduction on to the front so that we as readers know what's going on in the narrator's head. I hope that this review was useful to you. Happy writing!
Hey queerelves,
I like this poem. I like it because of its subject, it's so different from what I usually read on here. For every single stanza, I loved the last three lines. I like how short this is and I like how it doesn't single out a certain disease or condition. And I really like the title, because that's what brought me here. Here is some quibble:
"You can't pick and choose parts of me.
I am a package deal,"
I think changing 'can't' to 'cannot' will make this line run more smoothly and be more assertive. As if you're standing up for yourself, your demons, and disease. Whether the disease is figurative or literal.
"Love me,
please,
but don't think you can cure me."
Just take out the comma after "love me" but still keep it on its own line because then you aren't forcing the reader to pause because of the comma. But they get to fully embrace the sincerity in the words. And I freaking love the last line, never change it.
Keep expressing.
-Percybeth