Blogger | Josh Dun

Josh sat on the lid of the toilet seat, my fingers running through his hair as I rubbed the purple hair dye in. He had his eyes closed, and was smiling slightly. He must've been the only person I'd ever met who didn't have a resting bitch face.

Whilst he wasn't looking, I let myself admire his shirtless body. Just because I was a grown woman didn't mean I couldn't find a band member attractive!

"I can feel you staring," Josh mumbled.

"No you can't, because I'm not staring," I argued, but I didn't bother fighting when he just bit his bottom lip to stop himself from laughing at me.

I tapped the top of his head with my gloved hand.

"You're done, you just need to leave it for half an hour to develop."

He gestured at me to swap places with him, so I sat on the toilet as he pulled a clean pair of gloves on. His eyes scanned the instructions quickly, and then he started mixing the different bottles together. He'd been careful not to let me see what colour he'd picked, and now asked me to close my eyes so I wouldn't see the dye as it went on my hair.

"I'm just warning you, if I hate it, I am going to have to kill you."

I felt him dollop the first bit of dye onto my head.

"Wow, day one and you're already making death threats."

Even though I couldn't see him, I could hear the smile in his voice. And even if I'd wanted to sarcastically reply, I couldn't, because Josh had started running his fingers through my hair, scratching gently against my scalp so that he could coat my roots in hair dye.

I was a sucker for having my hair played with.

He worked in silence for a while, but then started speaking.

"Can I ask you something?"

I nodded.

"You never mentioned your dad. Earlier, I mean, when we were eating."

I stayed quiet for a minute, contemplating whether or not to talk.

"You don't have to answer. I'm sorry I said anything, ignore me." Josh rambled, obviously scared that he'd offended me in some way.

"Josh, it's fine. It's just not something I talk about very often."

I took a deep breath, and started my story.

"When I had just turned 18, a few months before I was supposed to start university, my dad got ill. Really ill. He had a brain tumour, and the doctors said that chemotherapy would be able to shrink it, or at least stop it from growing. I'd already decided that whilst my dad was going through all of this, there was no way I was leaving home, so I dropped out of university before I'd even started. The chemo stopped the tumour from growing for a while, but then a year or so later it started growing again."

Josh had stopped moving his hands now, too engrossed in my story.

"My dad was in and out of hospital for about a year after that, and we couldn't do anything. Mum and I just watched him deteriorate. A little while after, I turned 21, and I still hadn't left home, whereas everyone else my age was already off, living their lives as individuals. But then my dad died, and I just couldn't leave my mum, not after her husband had just left her. So it took me another two years before I could leave and do something for myself."

Josh was quiet for a minute, before he spoke, almost in a whisper.

"My family means everything to me. If something like that were to ever happen to one of my parents... I don't know how you could handle it. You're amazing, Lizzie."

I shrugged as Josh began to spread the dye to the tips of my hair once again.

"I just did what I had to do. It took a lot of effort to look after my dad for those years, and then my mum afterwards. But I had to, we had no one else."

Josh thought for a minute.

"But what about you? Did you get a chance to grieve? Your mum wasn't the only one to lose someone close to her, you lost your father."

I wondered whether or not to tell him, but I'd already told him this much.

"About a year after my dad died, I realised that I'd been so worried about mum that I'd kind of just bottled up everything I'd been feeling. So I basically went crazy." I laughed humourlessly. "I was really self destructive, and tried to hide it from my mum, but the only way I could do that was by shutting myself off completely. I'd sit in my room all day, just crying and hurting myself. I didn't know what else to do."

Josh had finished with my hair, so he just sat on the floor and continued listening.

I grinned. "You know what got me out of that self destructive period?"

Josh shook his head.

"Your music. God, it sounds so cheesy saying it out loud, but one day, I stumbled across Migraine. And I loved it. I loved how upbeat the music was, but how truly relatable and deep the lyrics were. So I listened to more of your songs, and I seriously fell in love. The first time I'd properly spoken to my mum in months was me running out of my bedroom and telling her that I needed her to listen to House of Gold. I remember standing in the living room with this YouTube video up, ready for her to watch, when my mum just burst into tears because I'd finally got up and wasn't crying in pain."

Josh stood up, and suddenly his arms were round me. His bare chest was being covered in hair dye, but he didn't stop hugging me until my alarm went off, signalling that it had been half an hour and Josh needed to wash the dye out. 

He stepped back.

"Thank you, Lizzie, for sharing that with me. It means so much to know that we've helped you like that."