The night before last, I went camping with three of my friends. It's something we've been wanting to do since late April or early May, and I was stoked that we finally got around to it.

Over the course of the night, somehow I managed to get fire duty. I had only one mission, and that was to keep the fire going until the sun rose. It turns out that I'm really bad at keeping a fire going, but somehow I managed to keep it with at least one flame illuminating us for the entire evening. I didn't sleep or anything, just kept the fire going. It was important somehow.

As with most outings, I brought with me my journal which I have been writing and drawing in for something like three year. It's full of excerpts from plays I'm writing, poetry, songs, doodles, art, set designs for plays, lists, and things of that nature. I have kept that thing close to me for years, and it's really been through some shit. I wrote things in there when I was horribly depressed, heartbroken, and pretty much every negative emotion you can imagine.

At some point during the evening, after infinite amounts of beer and such, I needed to keep the fire going. It was almost out, and I needed more kindling to get it started burning bright again. I began burning blank pages at the back of my journal.

The fire began to die again after I had used every single blank page in my journal. I still needed kindling, but there was none to be found. I began burning my art, writings, and everything in the journal, one page at a time. I watched songs, poems, and set designs as they went up in flames and became nothing more than ash. Then I started crying.

I wasn't crying for the loss at all. I was crying because I finally felt free. I finally felt as though I was releasing burdens I've been hanging onto for years. I knew it was the right thing to do.

When they realized what I was doing, my friends tried to stop me, tried to pull some of the pieces they felt were more important to me out of the fire and save them. I told them no. I told them it had to be done, that it was important.

I knew that they didn't matter anymore.

The words will always exist. The writings will always have happened. There will always be more songs. Just because they're not there anymore doesn't mean they never were; it just means I've finally let them go. I'm finally working past my demons, and I've never felt more happy or more enlightened in my life.