Her Anatomy | DAERIN

T H I R T Y T W O

Danielle Marsh was born in 1998 in Newcastle. She doesn't remember much about her short time living there. With her father being a police officer and a devoted alcoholic, was it any wonder her housewife mother, Sarah, left him when Danielle was just five years old as she headed to Sydney for an escape.

Danielle vaguely remembers her mother saying they were playing a game. They had to quickly pack as much as possible into a suitcase, but only anything important that Danielle needed. She never understood the game at the time, but that was the last morning she saw her father until she was a teenager.

At five years old, she didn't have many memories of Sydney, but she remembers the hustle and bustle of the big city. She remembers sharing a bed with her mother for the first couple of years they lived there in some rundown building run by some crazy woman.

Soon she found herself living in luxury by the age of 8. Her mother, Sarah, found herself a rich man. A very rich man. Danielle attended a private school and hated it.

As the years gradually passed, she grew to be an awkward teenager. She had a few friends and spent most of her time doing her homework or reading books, while most girls in her class were sniffing glue and kissing boys.

At the age of fifteen, not much had changed for Danielle. Life was life. Danielle was now a big sister to James and Owen. Girls in her class had already experimented with drink, drugs, and boys. Danielle had known for a couple of years that she was attracted to girls. It started in school when she watched the older girls at a sports day. Since then, she was obsessed.

Obsessed with boobs, bums and women's lips. This all considered it didn't stop her from being with a boy nearing her sixteenth birthday in a few months.

Matthew was a boy who lived at the end of Danielle's townhouse street. His father was a doctor, and his mother was a dentist, he seemed like husband material, even though she was only 15. Matthew had been crushing on her since the age of 12, right around the time Danielle's legs grew along with her breasts.

So when Danielle's mother and stepfather had to attend their usual business dinner once a month for her stepfather's law firm, she planned on losing her virginity to Matthew. Just like that. She wrote Matthew in her pink diary for a week on Friday. There were hardly any words exchanged between them when she told him to make sure he brought condoms and not to be late.

So when Matthew's naked body was shifting nervously above her own, Danielle knew for the first time in her life she had made a mistake. She shouldn't have done this when she knew how she really felt.

How she was attracted to women and how the pain of having Matthew inside of her also broke her heart, as she realized she had allowed herself to be so vulnerable. She cared too much about society and about what she had learned in Catholic school to be who she really wanted.

What would her family Priest, Father Joe think of her now? Pre-marital sex, all the while she could confirm in this moment as Matthew grunted, clearly not lasting any length...she was definitely gay. Without a doubt, she was gay. She was pleased Matthew had lasted a mere 30 seconds, if even, and collapsed on the bed beside her.

Never again, she thought in that moment. She would not let society or anyone else, like her friends or family, dictate how she was going to live her life. So she told her mother the very next day what she had done and that she was a lesbian. Her Mother did not take the news well and Danielle was sent back to her alcoholic father for the summer a week later.

A summer she grew into a woman. Even though she grew up in a small village near Newcastle, it turns out...she wasn't the only gay in the village. She met her first girlfriend Lily there and they made good use of the summer with her truly learning how amazing it was to actually be a lesbian.