A/N: Hi There! First of all thanks for giving this fic a chance, this is a project that I have been working for a while now, first of all I have to give a shout out and infinite thanks to girlfriday3000 on twitter that accepted the challenge of betta this multichapter, and deal with my dreadful grammar, as a non-English native speaker her help is invaluable to me and I love her dearly for this. She makes me see as if I actually know grammar which I don't XD

As well I want to tank and send all my love to Flor (darvey_dh), Cami (_cammilu) and Mar (MiriamDarvey) for their love, and support! it means the world to me .

Note: In this fic. We will follow Donna's journey of personal growth; So, for a while we are not going to see Harvey in the picture so please be patient, but he will be worth the wait.

The cover art is Donna's journal of 1996 and on my twitter at GipsygirlLy I will post some of the pages of this journal with feelings and ideas she is having through the story, this is complementary but not necessarily exclusive. These images will be posted between chapter updates or to let you know when a new chapter is going up. I have all ready post some pages to give a bit of context to the story, and they are pin in my profile. (The notes are embedded)

Chapter 1 Donnas decision

After Donna Paulsen's parents divorce, she didn't take it too well, she went through a dark phase and was very depressed, her world had collapsed, all she knew and loved had changed. She was not able to grasp how more than 25 years of marriage could come to an end so easily, she knew her parents loved each other, but the constant friction caused by her father's bad business ventures took a toll on the couple and on the family in general. After all, losing much of the family savings more than once was too much to ask for them.

Donna kept going over all the things she had lost; the trip to Paris, her piano lessons, her friends by constantly moving from place to place and switching schools more than once, and now the money for college. She was only a year away from finishing her college experience as a drama major, although she had an athletic scholarship thanks to her skiing accomplishments but she lost interest as soon as she dove into acting classes. Instead she got a part time job at the service desk in her college as the assistant of the dean but money was definitely an issue.

Indeed, she had all the reasons to be upset with her parents, she always had been the perfect daughter; kind, sweet, polite, sensitive to the needs of others, and very different from her sister who was a handful. She had always been such a good student; had the best grades of her class and she had even been the president of her drama club in high school.

Also, she didn't start dating in a serious manner until she was in college, actually at her 20 years she was a virgin, because she wanted to follow her mother's example by getting her first experience with her husband totally in love, but she wasn't a prude, she had had boyfriends and other experiences in acting camp.

She had fooled around a bit, never finishing what she usually started, but even her love life was a mess. Her last boyfriend was an ass and she learned he was only dating her to be the one to pop her cherry. Worst of all, she learned this was all because of a bet. Sure, he was handsome but what did she expect from a jock?

Donna had been very focused on getting to college to become a great actress. She wanted to be remembered like Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Vivien Leigh or Meryl Streep, she wanted to go on stage and perform plays by Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote, or maybe to be in a film or on TV and now all was falling apart, no one was going to hire her without credentials or so she thought.

And above all this was supposed to be her year. 1996 was a leap year and this was very special. February has 29 days only once every 4 years and as legend told, this event is magical. Only good things can come of it so she had all these plans made ahead. In the summer, she was going to take off a trimester to travel with a local theater Company to perform the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as the main character Maggie. But she didn't have the money for the trip, she didn't want the expense of living on campus and she wasn't going to get paid after the first month on the road since her salary depended on the success of the play. Unfortunately, this was also not guaranteed due to the poor advertising budget and the small venues they had booked. Although she had done all the paperwork at her college to do this and she had already had an agreement with the dean to keep a job at the front desk as soon as she returned, this was all for nothing. This was not going to work for her anymore so she decided to decline the role.

So, after a long, conscientious, and soul-searching night, she decided she was done. She was done crying, and feeling sorry for herself. She was done being the goody two shoes that she always had been and doing the things that were expected of her, she was going to live her life as she saw fit, she was going to do things that she didn't normally do and have new experiences. As her creative writing teacher told her, she had to have all sorts of experiences to reflect the emotions on the paper and the stage.

The decision was made. She was going to be more adventurous, she was going to become another person, a new character, someone very different from who she used to be. Maybe she would even get a tattoo and or a piercing, only God knew what she was going to do, she had always been so organized and had a plan for everything, but this time she was going to wing it, this was scary for her but she knew she could pull it off. She was going to disappear all summer to a place that nobody knew her, she already had the time on her hands and she wanted to run away from her problems, so, the only thing to do was to make a couple of phone calls, ask for a couple of favors, grab her savings, have a makeover, after all she was going to become someone entirely different, grab her bags and buy a bus ticket.

A/N: I really, really hope you like this chapter, this fic is meant to be a fun creative outlet and I really hope you like it, it would be amazing to receive your opinion, so please review if you like it, I would really appreciate it.

I know this chapter is a bit angsty but it would be getting better and funnier soon enough. I am trying to fill in the blanks in the life of our favorite couple to get to the main cannon, and why they act like they do; Somewhere in the story we will have M content and I will let you know so you can skip it if you don't like this kind of content.

What do you think of how Donna is going to handle her existential crisis?