writing.

There won't be much here that is vague and stylistically similar and recognizable to my other work. Why? Because I'm legitimately afraid of someone coming in and stealing what I have to say.

Words get stolen every day.

You will not take my lesser density.

So my epic essays and reflections will be kept close to home, close to heart, written in the fashion that seemed to work just fine for my predecessors, and I will continue to prove feasible as a contemporary.

Want to read something in particular? Let me know. Because I'm not afraid of sharing. Trust me. I touch until I get burnt. But once I'm burnt, I don't touch, nor do I enter the room in which I was injured.

how it goes.

So here we have it. This is the moment I suppose I've been waiting for. The culminating point at which I must realize what is before me and what is not, where I must go and where is out of bounds.

I've signed my life away to a state of miserable content, being there for those who don't deserve anything less than hell. What does that make me?

That brings about another important question: Who am I? Seriously. All of this flip-flopping, rule-bending, soul-searching has left me dry, but where is my ethereal high?

I'm making the decisions that are changing everything. I'll be telling it like it is, with a smile through the tears every time. Because what is misery if it does not bring a distant grain of opportunity. Opportunity to be something more. Opportunity to be something bigger. Greater. Less perfect, more our own, less predictable, more beautiful.

In a word, opportunity to be human.

I will be real, I will be amazing, I will kill you with kindness through the blinding mascara, and in the end, I will always be me. Love incarnate, hate impassioned, failure at best, hope when possible.

what happened.

I'm in my bed on a Thursday morning, and there is no consolation for a desperate and heartbroken Danielle. Of course, this is no average Thursday morning. This is the Thursday morning after the Wednesday night that I met my idols, Franz Ferdinand. The group of fine men who inspired me to aspire for something more, to move myself by moving those around me, to do what it is that I want to do, making what I want to do what I need to do. Specifically, Alex's book 'Soundbites' really pushed me off the edge Wednesday night. Conversation as follows:

Danielle: Alex, could you sign this book for me?
Alex: Sure. I hope you really enjoy it.
D: Oh I loved it. I finished it in maybe two days? Much better than the math homework I should have been doing.
A: Oh. Math. Ughhh. I didn't do math well. Nor science. It was history and English, those were the ones.
D: Yeah, English is what I do too.
A: Oh so you're at university?
D: No, I'm only in high school. But that's what I'm going to do.

Here is the first tragic slip of fate. "But that's what I'm going to do". Actually, until that point, I was not planning on writing. In fact, I had almost condemned the possibility to hell, along with being a musician, actress, and the other passions I have that seemed illogical and ill-suited to having a productive life of economic longevity. Conversation continues.

A: Well maybe one day you'll write a book then, yeah?
D: I would love that, absolutely love it.

Second slip of fate. Since when was it a goal and dream of mine to be published? Forever, actually. But I never said that. Never. Commencement.

A: [something] dedication.

Now here we have a problem, because I did not hear the first bit of the comment Alex made about dedication. I still ponder whether he said "That's dedication" or "It takes dedication" or whatever. The point is that his gift of dedication was imparted to me in a sense, and that can never be taken away. Never.

What hit me that Thursday morning was a sense of desperation, a sense of "Oh my God I don't know what I'm going to do with my life." I was so set on going into law and politics for so long that now that I realize that I actually hate those things, I don't quite know how to go about changing everything. So I find a basis. A root. A limb to hold on to instead of falling.

I get out of bed, tearstained cheeks staring back at me in the mirror. Picking up the book, I examine it once more. There is subtle water damage towards the back of the book. From lending out and stowage and transport there are pencil and pen smudges on the front cover. On the inside cover, "To Danielle, Lovely to meet you, Alex Kapranos".

This is my home base. This is where I start. A guideline. A root. Somewhere to dig in and take hold and claim land in the name of Danielle. Based on the prospect of adventure, my pen, a guitar pick and my voice, I will do for someone what was done for me.

This is Danielle. And this is my descent down the rabbithole.