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This piece reflects on the complexities of love as an emotional currency, exploring how early experiences of loss shape one’s understanding and expression of love. The narrative follows a woman who, after feeling orphaned, believes that unconditional love can anchor people and prevent loss. As she becomes a parent, she realizes that love can be…
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Author’s Note I return to shows like Tattletales for the same reason I return to old journals, old photographs, old versions of myself: not to revisit the past, but to understand the rules I learned without knowing I was learning them.This blog exists for that work. Clarity After the Storm is not about exposing what…
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A orange tabby’s tales of life at Huckleberry Inn The blizzard arrived on a night when the inn was empty. There were no guests and no footsteps on the stairs. No unfamiliar scents drifted through the hallway. Just Barney, the boys, and the old house settling into the storm. Huck felt the shift first. He…
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The year I came back to myself didn’t start with a revelation. It began with silence. It is the kind that settles in a house after too much has happened. This silence comes after the last apology never arrives. It settles after the people who swore they loved you vanish like they were never real.…
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My dirty little secret wasn’t a scandal. It wasn’t a crime.It was something far more unhinged. I believed in people who couldn’t be trusted with a houseplant. For years, I kept trying to be the stable one. I aimed to be the responsible one. I was the guy who held the emotional scaffolding together. Meanwhile,…
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In a chaotic night transforming into unexpected joy, a narrator reflects on newfound friendships, laughter, and personal liberation from past trauma. Amid the messiness, they relish the return of genuine laughter and a feeling of safety, realizing they no longer need to share their pain or seek validation. The following morning brings a serene quietness,…
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Mom, This year wasn’t the same without you. I felt your absence in the small, ordinary moments — the ones we used to share without thinking. The mornings were quieter. The days were longer. And the world felt a little less steady without your voice in it. I missed our rituals — the salon days,…
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The bag was warm in my hands, the paper already soft with grease. I had ordered two Egg McMuffins, the familiar comfort of toasted English muffins, crisp edges, and the balance of egg and cheese that always felt like a small promise kept. When I opened the bag, the smell was heavier, butterier. I peeled…
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The Arrival The air in the house didn’t just feel cold; it felt hollow. Elias stood in the silence of what should have been his sanctuary, but the house’s heartbeat—the ticking clock, the hum of life—was gone. In its place was a heavy, ancient dread. At the end of the corridor, a door stood ajar.…
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I did not come to celibacy as a saint. I came to it as a survivor.For years, I thought intimacy was the only proof of being alive. I mistook touch for mercy, desire for destiny. But the body, like the soul, can be worn thin by hunger. And hunger, when it is never satisfied, becomes…
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The phrase slipped into the room like a guest with too many meanings. “Bless your heart,” said the voice from Mississippi, smooth and deliberate, wrapped in sugar. To them, the words carried layers: sympathy for the weary, affection for the struggling, and sometimes a sly jab disguised as kindness. It was a phrase that could…
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There’s a bench in Cannon Park near my house. It doesn’t ask who I voted for. It doesn’t care if I’m right or righteous. Facebook, stripped of politics, becomes that bench. A place to sit with memory, humor, and the quiet ache of survival. No slogans. No shouting. Just a picture of a cat on…
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And it came to pass that the veteran sat in his chair as upon a throne of ruin, and the medals upon his wall gleamed like false idols in a temple of dust. The house groaned as though it bore witness, its beams crying out, its wallpaper peeling like a scroll unsealed. There was the…
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She raised five children without pause for herself.No sabbath, no silence, no soft chair.Her hands moved from sink to sock drawer, from stove to school forms,while the world mistook her labor for grace,and her exhaustion for strength. She didn’t speak of suffering. She identified with it.It was the quiet companion in her kitchen,the ache behind…
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The needle dropped, and instead of Merle Haggard or Mahalia Jackson, Jane’s crisp, commanding voice filled the room. Behind her, the Jacksons sang bright harmonies, their rhythms bouncing off the walls. The carpet became my mat, the coffee table shoved aside, and suddenly I was lunging and stretching in time with a world I’d only…
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The Delta hummed with its own rhythm—cicadas buzzing in the trees like a thousand tiny engines, trains moaning in the distance, voices carrying across porches where screen doors slapped shut against the evening air. Even the soil seemed to hold a sound, a low thrum of history that pressed itself into your bones. The air…
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Poem: Stillness, Not AbsenceI did not vanish.I folded. Like wings that once knew windbut now rest against the ribsof something holy. No energy, they say.But I say:the ember does not perform.It waits. Antisocial, they say.But I say:the sanctuary does not apologizefor its silence.I am not broken. I am paused.And in this pause,a vow breathes. ©…
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There are stories that don’t just move us—they rearrange us. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is one such story. It’s not merely about a young man named Mats Steen, nor about the game he played. It’s about the quiet revolution of presence. About how a soul, hemmed in by muscle and bone, found flight in…
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I got lost on the University of Wisconsin-Madison grounds. The buildings rose like monuments, each one insisting it knew where I should go, but none of them pointed me toward home. Maps were bolted to kiosks, but the arrows blurred, and the paths twisted into questions I couldn’t answer. As I walked, I felt the…
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I was a few years older.I had already folded the shirt.Already ridden the bus.Already survived the binder snapping shut.Eric came later—but he stayed. He texted me all day.Not because I asked.Not because I was falling.But because he knew the silence could bruise. A joke.A memory.A question about lunch.A reminder that I was still here. His…
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I rise before the sun speaks,coffee sharp, binder open—the day waits for no one,but I wait for myself now. No pawprint on the blanket,no soft weight curled beside me,just memory,and the way it still warms. January took Shady.The cold outside matched the quiet inside—I held him through the end,while the phone held silenceabout my mother.Two…
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The envelope arrived quietly. I wasn’t expecting it. Your handwriting stopped me cold— familiar, gentle, full of you. You were already gone. But somehow, you had sent me one last message. I opened it slowly, as if time might rewind if I moved carefully enough. Inside were your words. Simple. Loving. You didn’t know they’d…
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They left me. Fifteen hours in the garage. Binder open. Shirt folded. Breath fading. I had taken them on as my own. Loved them. Helped them. Held the tent pole while they danced in the spotlight. And when I needed them—when the ache behind my teeth became a prayer—they were gone. But God wasn’t. He…
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There were years when I stood outside every circle. Not by choice, but by the quiet violence of omission. The invitations that never came. The glances that slid past. The rooms where my name was never spoken. I learned to build sanctuary from scraps—ritual, rhythm, and the mercy of one man who stayed. Monogamy isn’t…
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https://barneyjamiepearson.com/January 28th, 2025 I held himlike I did in the beginning—tiny, trembling,mouth reaching for the bottleas if love could be swallowedone drop at a time. He grew into my shadow,my lap-bound truth,the quiet witnessto every unraveling. Even when the worldspun with chaos—when mental illnesstwisted love into obligation,and turned careinto control—he stayed. I poured myselfinto their…
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The bottle was white. Generic. No warning label for betrayal. Just a name—Ambien—and a dosage that promised sleep. Not escape. Not euphoria. Just sleep. I took it because the nights were loud. Not with sound, but with memory. The kind that loops. The kind that doesn’t ask for permission. The kind that makes you relive…
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I was recovering from another fusion surgery, the kind that rearranges pain, the kind that asks your body to trust metal more than memory. My spine held, barely. But love didn’t need posture; it needed proximity. So I slept on the couch to watch Mom. She was 87 and frail. Her breath was a tether;…
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I asked her to call. I thought I was asking for steadiness, for a voice that might help me hold the pieces together. I didn’t want to be alone with the silence pressing against me. When the phone rang, I picked up expecting care. Instead, her words came sharp, without pause, without warmth: “They were…
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Insert: 48 They ordered breakfaston my credit cardafter I tried to die. Eggs.Hash browns.A side of forgetting. No call.No pause.No silence held in my name. Just a transaction.Just a receipt.Just proofthat I was usefuleven in despair. I came back.Not for them.But for me.For truth.For breath.For the binder that stayed open. They never askedwhat it cost…
