#we don’t really know how it belongs to whether it’s phils or just a guest room

[danrifics]

wait the green room is or isn’t Phil’s filming room? help 😭

the green room is the green room and phils filming room is his filming room. hope this helps 💕

[daniactuallysnuffledthatpopcorn]

Painting Flowers (Chapter 5)

[A/N] My camp Nano project from April 2014. Heavily edited.

Summary: Dan has come to accept that his psychotic episodes and hallucinations are here to stay, when he meets Phil Lester. Although Phil can’t fix Dan, he does give him something to fight for. Something to try for, one last time.

WARNINGS: Mentions of self harm and suicide. Deals with mental illness, hallucinations and psychotic episodes.

Word count: 2.3K (14.2K total)

<-previous chapter -- next chapter->

Start at the beginning

Dan forgot his dream as soon as he opened his eyes. He remembered that it had been a nightmare and he’d been terribly scared, but he couldn’t recall what happened.

His mum was sitting by his bed. She smiled down at him and patted his shoulder, “How’d you sleep, sweetheart?”

“Fine.” Dan replied. His eyes studied the white walls of the room. He wasn’t at home, that was for sure. He vaguely recognised this place and he quickly realised where he was when he realised that he couldn’t move his arms or legs: he was at the hospital. “Why did they restrain me? Did I lash out?”

“No, you didn’t. They’re afraid you’re a danger to yourself.”

The cuts immediately sprung to Dan’s mind and he pressed his chin down to his chest in order to look at what he was wearing: his hoodie. He was still wearing his hoodie. They probably hadn’t seen anything. “When can I leave?” Dan felt like the answer to that question would confirm to him whether they’d seen or not.

“Soon.” His mum replied.

“Soon as in ‘just a few days’ or soon as in ‘about an hour’?”

“About an hour, I think. Your dad is signing some paperwork and they’re probably going to come in to ask you if you want to take stronger meds later, but I reckon we can leave after that.”

“Where is my phone?”

“Your phone?” She looked confused. Dan had never asked about his phone this short after waking up before.

“Yeah, I think it was near my bed when I.. You know.”

His mum retrieved the phone from her handbag, “Here it is.”

“Do I have any messages?”

“How am I supposed to see? You’ve got a password on this thing, don’t you?”

“Just turn it on and look at the top left corner. What pictures do you see?”

“Some kind of phone with a circle around it.” She said when she’d followed his instructions. “If you give me your password I can read it for you.”

Dan bit his lip, “It may be private.”

She laughed at him, “Were you sexting someone, Daniel?”

Dan blushed and shook his head vigorously.

“Yeah, you didn’t expect an old woman like me to know what that is, did you?”

“I didn’t. But I wasn’t sexting anyone, it’s just that I, I’ve like, been on a date with this person.”

“You think this girl has messaged you?”

“Right.” Dan said. “Girl.”

She gave him a puzzled look for a second before slowly nodding in comprehension, “A boy. You’ve been on a date with a boy and you didn’t want me to know that.”

“I would turn away in shame but that’s a tad difficult when restrained.” Dan joked.

“Dan, listen to me. I honestly could not care less about the gender of the person you’re dating, as long as they make you happy. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” “Good. Now what’s your password?”

Dan rolled his eyes and recited the code to her. He was going to have to change that later, no way in hell would he allow his mum to be able to unlock his phone at any given moment.

“I just pull this bar down and tap on the message, right?” “That’s right.”

She turned the screen towards him. Seven new messages from Phil.

‘In a lecture right now considering just getting up and leaving’

‘Are you home yet? Do you have time to go for drinks or something?’

And then there were the two messages Dan had heard come in just after he’d sent his confession. He was a bit scared to read them, but he was also scared that the screen would start blurring again as soon as he’d attempt to read.

‘Hey dude that’s alright man don’t be sorry’

‘You’re not out of your mind Dan it’s fine’

Those were the messages Dan would’ve read near the beginning of his episode. There was this chance that they would’ve calmed him down enough for him to be able to pull himself together, but maybe they wouldn’t have. Dan didn’t think it was a big enough chance to wind himself up over.

There were three more messages, two from the night before and one from that morning.

‘Are you okay Dan?’

‘Message me back I’m worried about you’

‘I know you’re getting my messages, if this is because of what you sent me last night, I promise I’m not mad and you didn’t scare me off either it’s fine I promise. Please just message me back.’

“Do you think they’d untie me to let me reply?” Dan asked when he looked back up at his mum.

“Maybe if you ask nicely. I can type out a reply for you if you want.”

“No thanks. You can turn it off now.”

“You’re such a typical teenager. What secrets are on this phone of yours?” She laughed and waved the phone around a bit before getting up and putting it on her chair.

“I will be right back.”

“You know where to find me, I’m not going anywhere.”

Just as his mum left the room, the phone made its familiar bubble sound. Neither of his parents would message him because they knew he was restrained, so it had to be Phil. He hoped those damn doctors would come in and let him go soon so that he could finally reply. They weren’t even properly dating yet and Dan was already being a bad boyfriend by not replying to messages.

 The door opened again after about ten minutes, and this time he saw his dad’s face appear.

“Hey buddy, how you holding up?”

“Couldn’t be better.” Dan replied sarcastically. “Do you have a doctor to undo these restraints?” He pulled on the binds to emphasise his point.

His dad nodded, and after him, Dan’s mum and a doctor walked into the room.

“Are you feeling better today?” The doctor asked him with a friendly smile while he walked up to the bed.

“I guess so. I just really want to answer these texts because I just heard another one come in.”

“You’ve got friends who are worried about you, eh?”

“Sort of.”

The doctor undid his binds and Dan immediately jumped up and grabbed his phone. He ignored the dizziness that set in because he’d moved too quickly, and unlocked his phone.

‘Sorry I was in the hospital. I’m about to go back home though’

The reply came before Dan got the chance to follow his parents out of the room.

‘Hospital?? Are you alright??’

‘Yep I’m fine I had an episode kind of thing-y but I’m fine now’

‘Offer for drinks is still on, but I can just come by your house and we can like listen to some music together if you would prefer some peace right now.’

‘Music sounds good. When?’

‘Ready when you are’

“Dan, are you coming?” His parents were both standing at the end of the hall and Dan had stopped in the middle to be able to message Phil back faster.

“Yeah.” He uttered absentmindedly.

‘Will be home in 30. You can come by whenever you want. I’ll boot up Spotify’

He finally shoved his phone back in his pocket and speed walked after his parents.

“Were you messaging Phil?” His dad asked.

Dan was about to reply but then tilted his head, “You know about Phil?”

“Of course. Your mum told me about him. So were you messaging him?”

“Yeah, he’s coming over in a bit.” Dan said.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” His mum asked.

“Shit, is my room still a mess from yesterday night?”

“It is. Do you want me to clean that up before you go in?” She offered.

Dan shook his head, “No thanks, I’ll tidy it myself.”

 As soon as they got back to the hotel Dan took the lift up to his room and started putting everything back where it belonged; books back in their stacks on the dresser, notebooks and school stuff back on his desk, and then finally he walked into the bathroom and picked the blade up off the floor. He turned it around between his fingers for a few seconds before opening the cabinet and putting the blade back in its box. He was done just in time, as he heard knocking on the door when he stepped back into his bathroom. “Coming.” He called.

He opened the door to find Phil standing there. Messy hair, checkered shirt and dark skinny jeans. He was smiling down at Dan with a joyous grin as he stepped in. “I’m glad you’re okay, man. Is it inappropriate to express my happiness by hugging you?”

“Be my guest.”

Phil immediately replied by wrapping his arms around Dan and pulling him close to his chest. “When you didn’t reply even though you were receiving my messages I first thought you just weren’t interested anymore, but then I got really worried about you.”

“It’s alright now. Nothing happened, I threw a fit and got taken to the mental ward.”

Phil didn’t even seem fazed by his blatant use of the term ‘mental ward’, he didn’t seem put off by this whole mental illness thing at all, actually.

“Nothing I say seems to be able to dishearten you.”

“Nothing does. Look, Dan, just because you happen to be schizophrenic doesn’t mean I will just give up on you. You are not your illness, you are your wit, your intelligence, your love for books and anything alien. That’s who you are. I’ll gladly take the other things with that.”

Dan nodded with his head against Phil’s shoulder. It surely was food for thought. Dan had thought to himself that he was more than his illness plenty of times, and he’d tried to convince himself of this just as many times. But hearing it be said by someone else was different. Everyone at school treated him like he was his illness and when you live among that for long enough, you’ll start to believe it. Which was what Dan had done.

His parents and psychiatrist had tried to tell him there was more to him that his mental illness too, but that was kind of their job, wasn’t it? Like your mum telling you that you’re beautiful even though that’s not what you see when you look in the mirror. That’s what it was like.

 “Now what kind of music do you like?” Phil carefully pulled away and Dan disliked the loss of touch right away. He wasn’t a very touchy-feely person, but this was different. At least, that was what he was trying to tell himself.

“Bands, mainly. Like a bit of everything, I guess.”

“Fantastic. Where is your computer?”

“Right, I had to tidy my room as soon as I got home so I didn’t have time to start my computer. Give me a second.” Dan pulled his laptop out of one of the drawers of his desk and turned it on.

“You didn’t have to tidy for me, my own room is a mess.”

“Yeah, but I threw a fit, remember. It was really bad.”

Phil shrugged, “I could’ve helped you clean, I don’t mind.”

Dan typed in his password and started up Spotify. “I guess.” He said.

Phil came to stand behind him and looked over his shoulder. “I see Muse, Radiohead and Björk. I can see this relationship working out.”

Dan laughed, “I do try to have a music taste that is attractive to other guys.”

“Mission accomplished then. You’ve got some very great music in that library.”

Dan clicked on one of the songs and Phil quickly recognised it, “Painting Flowers.” He exclaimed excitedly.

It didn’t take long before they were both dancing and loudly singing along to Dan’s playlist on shuffle, not really caring about the other guests.

 Phil stayed with him all day and it was one of the calmest days Dan had had in months. It wasn’t just calm as in they didn’t do anything, it was calm as in it was quiet in his head, and he was able to easily ignore The Captain and Oasis (he felt a bit bad about ignoring Oasis, but abandoned that thought just as quickly as it had showed up). They ate lunch in the kitchen with Brianna and the other two helpers, Ryan and Clayton, and Dan’s mum even sat with them for a few minutes.

And everyone was equally interested in Phil, that being very, very interested. After all this was about Dan, that boy they’d all grown protective of. When the two boys got up to go back to Dan’s room, Clayton grabbed Dan’s shoulder and whispered: “If he does something you don’t want, kick him in the balls. He seems nice though.” He then winked and let go of him.

“Thanks.” Dan grinned.

 Dinner was spent in Dan’s bedroom, both sitting on the floor with a hot plate of pasta on their laps and their feet tapping against the floor to the rhythm of the Muse album that was playing on repeat from Dan’s computer. They hardly spoke, but the silence felt comfortable and light and neither felt the urge to break it. So they sat in silence and every now and again they’d look up, catch each other’s eyes, and just smile.

 At eleven pm Dan glanced at the clock. Usually he’d be getting ready for his walk by this time. Phil was lying on his bed with one of Dan’s comics in his hands and his eyes trained on the page. Dan could ask him to come, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted him to come along. He usually went on his walks to clear his mind and be quiet for a while, but if he had someone with him that would mean it would be less relaxed and quiet.

He sat down on the bed and grabbed a comic from the stack near Phil’s feet.

No walk then.

[itsaclife]

Ryan White: Still Teaching 27 Years Later

If you’re from Indiana and you’re my age, you may have heard the name Ryan White, but you can’t place where you heard it from. If you’re older, you may remember he was in the news a lot. If you’re older than that, you know exactly who I’m talking about. If you’re younger, and have no clue who Ryan White is, you need to take a field trip to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum and educate yourself.

Earlier this year, I took my tots to the Children’s Museum and had a jolly holiday. I didn’t really expect to gain much from that day, other than just having a good time with my favorite little humans, but I came away with a story that kind of changed my life. At the museum, there is an exhibit called The Power of Children Making a Difference. This exhibit houses the stories of 3 children throughout history: Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges, and Ryan White. Ryan White was born and raised in Kokomo, Indiana. He was born a severe hemophiliac. To treat this, he was given Factor 8, or Factor as it is often referred to. Factor 8 is a blood product administered to hemophiliacs to help their blood clot. Back in the 80s, the blood supply was tainted and thousands of hemophiliacs were diagnosed with AIDS, among those, Ryan White, who, at the age of 13, was the first teenager to be diagnosed. At that time, AIDS was a new disease and very little was known about it. Once the community Ryan grew up in found out about the disease, he was unable to go back to school. This is how Ryan became famous - he entered into a one-year court battle with the school system to earn back his right to attend school and continue his education. Ryan fought the disease for 5 and a half years before passing away in April of 1990 at the age of eighteen. Along his journey, he came in contact with many famous people, allowing him to reach out to a wide audience and educate our country as well as other countries (his family was able to take a trip to Italy to educate the Italians about AIDS, who knew that they would have hemophiliacs diagnosed with AIDS and didn’t want to treat their people as Ryan had been treated at home). Today, his mom still travels across the country speaking about her son and continuing to promote education about the disease that took her son. Sometimes, her daughter, Andrea, joins her. 

After seeing this exhibit, learning a little about a boy who was so close to home, who experienced such discrimination, prejudice, and harsh judgement, I needed to know more. Ryan wrote a book called: Ryan White My Own Story. If you haven’t read it, you should. The book was originally published in 1991; Ryan passed before he ever got to see the number of people his story truly touched. A movie was also filmed about Ryan’s initial diagnosis of AIDS and the battle he fought to go back to school. That film is called The Ryan White Story and it’s available on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it. Even then, even after reading his book and watching the movie, I didn’t feel like I knew enough. More than that, I felt like I was in mourning for someone I didn’t even know, and months later, I still feel that way.

I follow the Children’s Museum page on Facebook and saw that Ryan’s mom and sister would be at the Children’s Museum around the 4th of July. I messaged my mom and asked if she wanted to go, she agreed, and off we went. Seeing Ryan’s exhibit takes on a whole new meaning when you experience it with his mom and sister. First, I thought a majority of the things inside the exhibit were just replicas. Wrong. Everything down to the bed, the slippers, the backpack, and the GI Joe’s belonged to Ryan. The “house” that his bedroom is in is modeled after the house in Cicero, Indiana, where the Whites later moved to after leaving Kokomo, right down to the slanted ceilings and the window with Ryan’s name in it. (I later read an article that said his family put up red letters spelling out “Ryan” in his bedroom window after he passed so that people driving by would know exactly where his bedroom was). I was amazed to hear Jeanne, Ryan’s mom, say that, 27 years later, it hasn’t gotten any better, and she still misses her son every day. It didn’t necessarily surprise me, but people always say time heals all wounds; sometimes that just isn’t true. Jeanne gave a short and simple speech, going through the timeline of Ryan’s birth to his death, and then did a short Q&A session. I had one simple question: How did she pick the pallbearers. If you don’t know, you can google images of Ryan’s funeral, and the majority of his pallbearers were celebrities - Elton John, Howie Long, Phil Donahue. However, I could not, for the life of me, muster up the nerve to speak even one word to Jeanne or Andrea. They dismissed the room, and all the guests could come up and get a red wristband that said “Remembering Ryan White” as they filtered out. (Which I’ve worn every day since then). My mom went up to Andrea, said a few words to her, and then moved to Jeanne, where she introduced herself and spoke about how she grew up very close to Kokomo and couldn’t believe the reaction of that community and what their family went through. Jeanne and my mom, as true Hoosiers, talked as if they were buddies from day one, which I’m forever grateful for because I was allowed to hear more of the story than any guests that day; I got more of an insight into a life I’m so fascinated by. Still, I couldn’t speak. To this day, I KICK myself for not saying anything. Now, I have a TON of questions: How were the pallbearers picked? Did Ryan have any idea that he was going to be put into a coma and never wake up again? (In his final days, Ryan was so sick. His doctors thought, if they put his body in a coma, it would slow things down and allow the medicine they were giving him to work better. It didn’t). How did Andrea deal with their family being thrust into the limelight? Did she get jealous of Ryan? When Ryan passed, did she feel guilty for ever being jealous? When he was originally diagnosed with AIDS, they believed Ryan would only live 3-6 months so, once he lived past that, did they think he would live forever? With each passing year Ryan was alive and continuing to fight, did they think he would “beat” the disease? Did Ryan ever talk about wanting a family of his own or did he know that would never happen? A MILLION QUESTIONS. I may never ever ever get to ask those but Ryan’s story means even more to me after that day than it did before whether I know every iota of his story or not. (But still, if you know those answers, email me!)

This is why Ryan’s story is important: While it’s important that we continue to educate ourselves when it comes to various diseases and it’s important to strive for cures across the board, Ryan’s story speaks to me on a level almost completely separate from his disease. This was a kid who went through bullying, discrimination from peers AND THEIR PARENTS, who should have KNOWN better, and had the majority of the community he had known since he was born turn their backs on him. This is a story, I’m positive, MANY people have suffered through without having a terminal disease to battle. Ryan didn’t get mad though and he didn’t seek revenge; he knew people were scared and they were acting out of fear. He, at such a young age, understood how they felt, even if he didn’t agree with how they reacted. THAT’S what I took from his story. He wasn’t going to try to FORCE someone to like him or to be around him; if you were scared, then you were scared. Sure, you were ignorant, but you didn’t know any better. What he would try to do is educate those who were willing to listen, not for the benefit of himself, but so that others wouldn’t have to experience what he had to go through. WHO DOES THAT?? He was a hemophiliac his whole life and already had to live by a different set of standards: not being able to participate in sports (though his mom did say he played baseball for one year and was terrible at it), always having to be careful so he didn’t get a bleed, and then he gets AIDS on top of that, which literally destroyed his body, and all he wanted to do was educate people. (Well that and go to school). How simply amazing and compassionate was he? 

What I learned from Ryan is that, for all the physical and mental pain he suffered, he continued to push through with a smile. He continued to advocate for those who didn’t have a voice and because of that, medicine has made so many significant advances when it comes to AIDS. He understood that holding on to anger wouldn’t do himself any good and he forgave those who didn’t ask for it nor did they really deserve it. He handled his illness with dignity and grace beyond his years. While those years may have been cut incredibly short, his example lives on. 

My wristband reminds me of Ryan’s story every day. I would be remiss if I didn’t pass that along.