"I wish I'd stopped. But I didn't (P. 106)."

It is undeniable that we have all changed since we were very young, not only physically but regarding our thoughts and ideas as well. I find it as obvious as stating that grass is green, or two plus two is four. So undoubtedly there's a difference between writing something when we're thirteen or writing the same thing when we're twenty-six. However, in The Burn Journals, Brent Runyon does something I had never seen before: He writes at the age of twenty-six as if he were thirteen years old. He doesn't outright say something to alert the reader of this. Instead he writes everything in present-tense. So instead of remembering, he's actually in a way reliving everything that happened at the beginning of his teenage years.

At first I didn't understand it in this way, and was surprised at how forward he is with so many of his thoughts. He seemed so naïve hoping his dad would drive him home on the night of the day he set himself on fire. Further on, I found it incredibly childish when his mom tells him Maggie, the girl in the room next to him, is too sick to have surgery, and his response is "That's good. I'm winning (P. 30)."And that's when I realized: He is trying to sound childish. That's the way he means for it to be understood, thus showing that he was young and immature when he made this irrational mistake.

Afterwards in the book, Runyon continues using a childish tone. When his wounds are being cleaned, he complains about his back hurting the worst and says "I don't know why people need backs. I don't think I need mine. I'd be happy if they just removed the whole thing and left me alone." Considering that he's a twenty-three year-old, this is a pretty dumb thing to say. So he's doing it on purpose to seem ignorant and dense. He does a similar thing to exhibit the selfishness of a thirteen-year-old, as he writes "... I dont want to forget anything. I don't care if they are terrible memories. They're mine (P. 86)." He could have said that last sentence in so many other ways, but the way he does, shows the childish voice he is trying to depict.

Since Runyon writes in present-tense, he is able to aptly express how his thoughts began to slowly change. On the day he burned himself he thought he would be released from the hospital that night, obviously unaware of how bad he had hurt himself. Then a month after that, he was impatiently waiting to be released, still oblivious to how serious the damage was. Then after being in the hospital for three months, he finally realizes what a bad decision he made. "I keep thinking about it," he says. "I was in the bathroom and I had a gas can and the matches and I sat on the toilet. That's when I should've realized how stupid I was being. That's when I should've stopped (P.105)." He thinks about all the other better choices he could've of made, and regrets his decision terribly. I guess he chose to use such a childish, immature, and selfish tone to demonstrate how much he still regrets what he did and to show how much he's changed now.