Children

Alex smiled at me. His hair was messy, sticking up artistically and his eyes looked amazing in the light. The flames made his face look oddly lit up in the night. The fire was ready. We were sitting close, the warmth from the fire making us feel, well, um, warm?

I couldn't wait. Despite all my arguments, maybe this was a good idea.

"Ready?" I asked Alex.

"Definitely. I've been ready forever. Well kind off."

"Wanna start?"

Alex bit his lip. He nodded finally. He looked thoughtfully at the fire.

He held the journal in his hand. With a deep breath and a determined look, he threw it into our small campfire.

It burned. Page after page. Slowly turning into crisp. Gone. I stared at all the pages, all the words, thoughts, and feeling that were inside those pages. A few years of Alex. A few toxic, hard, difficult years that almost killed him.

I looked at Alex. "You okay?" I asked tentatively.

He nodded. "It's gone now. I'm free from it. I'm done. I'm never going to be that again."

I smiled. I held all the papers I'd written.

Alex asked from me that I describe our story. What happened. What almost happened. He said it would help him. He wanted it written so he could destroy it. He insisted that those papers were what was wrong.

So I tried. I'm not an author. I'm not even a lyricist like Alex. I'm not particularly into literature even. It was horrible. I never ever wanted to imagine it. Writing it, imagining it, putting all my thoughts into it, made it feel real.

It almost happened. On that day, Alex almost jumped off the bridge. And he didn't. He didn't. That makes all the difference in the world. He stood up to his demons, stood up to whatever made him like this. He picked life.

I don't know how I managed to save him, that day on the bridge. He almost did it. He was so close to it. I don't know what made him stop. I remember screaming at him, begging him not to, talking to him. In the end, slowly, he came back. I don't know how. That's okay. I never want to be in that situation again.

It's been exactly a year since that day.

Alex wanted to burn those memories. I argued burning the it wouldn't make it make disappear. Alex didn't care. He wanted to kill his own death, to kill who he was. He wanted to have a funeral for the person inside of him that wanted to him to kill himself.

So that's what we did.

Smiling at Alex, I threw all the pages I wrote into the fire. They burned brightly. It was gone. I'd never forget what almost happened but it felt good to destroy it. We could put it past us. We could move beyond it all.

Alex took out a bottle of water and poured it on the fire, making it sizzle. No more. I never did discover what really happened, who did Alex blame in the journal. And that's okay. Because people do deserve privacy and not everyone has a journal I can steal.

The fire and all the papers were gone. We walked away, free.

We're happy. Or at least, happier. As cliche as real life can get.

We're not children anymore.

We don't know. That's okay.

Sometimes the room will be white.
Sometime you have to paint over it all.
Sometimes you have to suffer the white.
Sometimes black is more toxic than white.
Sometimes life is better than death.
Sometimes writing will make it disappear.
Sometimes it helps you meet the one you love.
Sometimes we can burn the problem.

And if not, we can deal with it.