My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

This was the beauty of sleep—reality detached itself and appeared in my mind as casually as a movie or a dream.

My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.

“I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.”

Nothing ever panned out in terms of “love.” Reva often spoke about “settling down.” That sounded like death to me.

If I’d met him now, I would have assumed that he was gay.

Being pretty only kept me trapped in a world that valued looks above all else.

I was lucky to have my dead parents’ money, I knew, but that was also depressing.

I went straight into black emptiness, an infinite space of nothingness. I was neither scared nor elated in that space. I had no visions. I had no ideas.

OH, SLEEP. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.

I was more of a somniac. A somnophile. I’d always loved sleeping.

glaring at me as if I’d wrapped my umbilical cord around my neck on purpose. Maybe I did.

None of us had much warmth in our hearts.

“I’m not thinking that far ahead. And I might not live that long.” I yawned.

I wanted to hold on to the house the way you’d hold on to a love letter.

I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t.

I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.

Caffeine was my exercise.

This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.

I was trapped. The day would be hell. I would suffer. I felt I might not survive. I needed a dark, quiet room, my videos, my bed, my pills. I hadn’t been this far from home in many months. I was frightened.