The Journal of Alexa McIntyre

Chapter 1

I have an illness. While not literally fatal I do believe it to be destroying my life. Piece by piece, day by day, time passes me by, and I realize that I have not lived. That is my illness. This is my illness. I have an uncanny ability to never live in the present. You see, I feel like I am waiting, waiting for the moment where my life becomes desirable for me, where I will actually like my life, and then, and only then, I will allow myself to live.

Right now, living seems quite impossible. The example that provides the most accurate description of the most recent of my seventeen years of life: I have spent my entire high school career waiting to go to college. This is all formed under the foolish assumption that college will be everything I imagine it to be. In other words, I will meet more people, go to more parties, find happiness in a magical city far away from the suburbs of New Jersey, live in a world where my social life is not dictated by the party invitations of a few arrogant girls, and most importantly, meet boys.

It sounds shallow, but the truth is I hate high school. I despise high school. I have come to associate my own home with stress, I have known the same two hundred people for the last three years, I have never dated a guy.

I understand the irony when I say that my motto is to truly experience life, in all its richness, its flavor, its endlessly fruitful opportunity. That is just simply not possible at a small New Jersey high school. Since I was born here I have become entrapped inside this confined space and all I wish is to escape. I am a vacuum thirsting for new experience and culture and diversity yet each year I am forcefully quenched by the same god awful substance reeking of small town privileged odor.

But I don't want to give the wrong impression. Perception is reality only to those perceiving. I do not perceive myself as I know myself as I have described. I can see, however, that to the realities of others, I do not appear to be struggling as I have said. If I was going to describe myself in one sentence from an outsiders perspective here's what I would say: Smart privileged Jewish girl who will probably be valedictorian and goes to parties. Please don't judge me for my description, it is a combination of ways in which others have described me. As far as appearances go, I am entirely unsatisfied with my own, but have been blessed with an optimism which some might deem delusional that perhaps what I find unattractive others find attractive, or at least will become attractive in the future, like when I go to college. My mother is a beautiful woman, I have heard it all my life. While I am told I look like her, she was granted a natural beauty I am not sure I could ever achieve. I was given very average features, but with the use of cosmetics and the touch of an artist's precision, I was given the ability to become something more. I read something like that in a book once. Its an eerily accurate description of me, I believe.

Anyway, I have been awfully vague and really haven't provided any insightful information about what you will be reading. To be frank, this will be nothing exciting. This is my story about my time through high school: how I escape and how I indulge and how my indecisiveness, which has become an unfortunately defining characteristic of my person, grants me a thirst for life I desperately wish to fulfill. Welcome to my novel, a place where you will be privy to the deepest thoughts of Alexa McIntyre.