I took a deep breath and turned on the camera.
"Hey everyone! So, due to popular demand after my last video, I'm making a video focusing on my experience with anxiety. It's actually taken me a long time to figure out how to make this, as I'm still not 100% sure what I want to say, but I'm going to try my best to do this topic a justice."
Dan smiles at me from behind the camera, his dark eyes lighting up. "So, most of my life, I've had a whole variety of mental illnesses like ADD and minor depression when I was about fifteen, but I always learned to compensate, keep all that stuff inside. I was taught from a pretty young age that I should keep my issues to myself and focus on grades and doing well in life.
"So, mental illness isn't new to me, but I hate admitting that kind of thing. I hate making people worry about me, which is probably one of the things that made my anxiety so bad. You can't just keep that shit inside, you know?" I take another deep breath. "Dan, I can't do this. I just can't."
He shakes his head, "C'mon Mia. You can. It's okay." He doesn't get in front of the camera, but he might as well be next to me on the bed.
"So I started this channel at a young age, and since then, obviously, I've changed a lot. But, more recently, I've felt this obligation to stay the same person on my channel as I was five, six years ago. I guess I'm worried I'll disappoint all of you, the people that put me here. Meanwhile, I guess, I've kind of put my own feelings on the backburner..."
I pause again, taking a sip of coffee and eating a crisp. "Sorry, this is just hard and stuff. But yeah I disregarded my own feelings and what I wanted to do, and instead kept acting like I have been for the last six years. And while I wanted to be myself, or a more recent version of myself, I didn't really feel comfortable doing that. That, as well as as wanting to keep my private life private, made me generally very stressed and very anxious."
I keep working at the video, bit by bit. At one point I start crying some, but I wipe away the tears and redo my mascara before starting the camera up again. I don't say anything about Dan, or Greece. But I don't lie.
"That was good, Harrison. Now to film the "coming out,"" says Dan, sitting next to me. I shake my head.
"No. Not yet. I'm tired, and it's super early. Can we do this tomorrow?" I ask. Dan smiles and nods.
"Of course, babe. I'm proud of you. Celebratory dinner? I'll cook." I laugh. We both know Dan is a shit cook, although only marginally worse than me. The extent of his knowledge in food ends at the last page of the Delia
Smith cookbook. We'll be ordering tonight.
"Dan," I yell, looking into the living room where he sits as usual on Tumblr.
"What?" he yells back, looking up.
I hold up a tube of lipstick, "Let me do your makeup!" He gives me a funny look.
"My makeup? This is not some YouTube challenge, Mia." I laugh.
"Not everything goes on YouTube, Daniel," I say, turning my whole body towards him, "C'mon, just let me put some eyeliner on you... Pete Wentz did it, look at him." Dan laughs.
"You're so dumb. But fine. Put some shit on me." He comes and sits next to me, and I give him a kiss on the cheek, grabbing some foundation. We both happen to be the same shade, pale as hell. He's blessed with skin that isn't satanic, so it's not like he really needs anything.
He gets a nice pair of cheekbones and some bronzing, bright red lipstick and eyeliner. That's the difficult part, as he won't stop blinking. I accidentally streak mascara on his cheek, but it could pass as a beauty mark.
I promised I wouldn't take any pictures of him, but he looks so great I snap one pretty quickly for Twitter.
"You look pretty, Dan," I say, resting my head on his shoulder.
"I feel pretty," he jokes, laying a kiss on the top of my head and wrapping an arm around my neck. Not like he's going to choke me or anything, though. In like a hugging romantic way. Not murderous.
We laugh and then try to make dinner, a vegan pizza which is weird but cool. It's a little startling and funny at first without the cheese, but after a while I didn't really notice the difference. Dan cooked most of it, but I say that I helped.
We also Skype with Phil, who seems very happy with his fiancé. She has black hair now, which I like a lot. She's pretty much the punk rock goddess I aspire to be.
It's a really happy day, and later that night we go about setting up for Dan's video tomorrow. He's trying the whole, "doing what you want to do" thing as well although he doesn't have to change much drastically. Tomorrow he's going to film an old anecdote, or "Danectode." He says he hates the name, but ironically will still use it. "Ironically."
We end up sleeping around one thirty or so. As we lay in bed, I keep noticing little bits of mascara still on Dan's eyelashes. He tried washing off all the makeup, but obviously that didn't work out well.
My boyfriend is so amazing.
