My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

My hibernation was self-preservational.

“We’re all alone, Reva,” I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer.

She was an expert at conflating canned advice with any excuse for drinking to oblivion.

I was kids’ stuff. I was nonsense. I wasn’t worth the calories.

I resented her for that, but she seemed immune to guilt and shame. I think she got away with so much because she was beautiful.

“He’s too drugged up to talk,”

The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine. I might as well have worked on Wall Street.

wondering if one day I’d be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts.