Blog

The students were presented with two poetic lines about angels & demons and asked to consider those competing concepts.

JASON…speaks of the challenge to keep the demons of the past from shading the possibilities of the present.

Two Sides

There are different sides of your own mind: the angel, the demon, and something in between. No matter who you are or what you believe, there is no helping yourself from falling into one of these sides. It is not emotion but a collection, subsides of memories that come back when you don’t want them to. Most of the time, you’re somewhere in between, not thinking about anything substantial while going to work, school, the store, or nowhere at all. My point being that you don’t need to be anywhere or doing anything for things to come up to bite you.

I was walking to my house on a cold day while snowflakes were slowly falling, disappearing under my breath. I couldn’t think of much because I was hearing a beat, it was like listening to someone’s heartbeat who had no heart, or listening to someone talk who isn’t there. The feeling was so confusing I couldn’t really think of anything else. That’s why I walk; I try to reach something that isn’t there, trying to fill that feeling of longing. When you don’t have anyone to talk to or make new memories, that leads you to a door. Behind the door are all the memories you don’t want to remember… so you don’t open it and keep looking for something else. No matter how much you attempt to close this door, it keeps creeping open… at home, sitting down, tossing a ball up and down, imagining all the more productive things I could be using my time for at that moment. Recently, I was thinking about many different, uninteresting things, switching between sides of my brain like a game of hopscotch until I tripped on the crack of the sidewalk and found myself on the wrong side of where I want to be. Like being hit by truck-kun, the door was open, the demon I didn’t want to face stood right in front of me, looming down. I felt the pressure before I knew it was there. The door I saw before held more of my trauma than I could have imagined. Madness was consuming me and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to lose myself. The things I was remembering gave me motivation to hold back from giving in and the people that helped me would hate to see where I am now. I persevered and was saved by someone else, again. 

I was always someone who needed help. I could never do anything for myself which is the important stuff I needed to realize. I didn’t need to come to terms with myself but I could learn to do things on my own so that I wouldn’t need to be saved by anyone. If I couldn’t suppress it anymore, I could at least help myself when I need to. It doesn’t matter what happened to you yesterday, you just need to learn how to love yourself for who you are today.

Jason Barnett

February 6, 2026