My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Unemployment was rolling in as long as I made the weekly call into the automated service and pressed “1” for “yes” when the robot asked if I’d made a sincere effort to find a

none of it affected me.

Crazy mentality but ok

knew she was deep in debt from college and years of maxed-out credit cards, and that she shoplifted testers from the beauty section of the health food store near her apartment on the Upper West Side.

I fear this may be a juxtaposition

since we’d formed a friendship, if I told her that something good happened, she’d whine “No fair” often enough that it became a kind of catchphrase that she would toss off casually, her voice flat.

If reva sucks so much why are they still friends

Jewish, if she thought things came easier to me

They both have privilege though

WASP.

Oh no wonder she can squander her life away

“It’s because I’m fat.” She really wasn’t. She was very pretty, in fact.

both can be true at the same time

but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person.

tf???

Even at my worst, I knew I still looked good.

I bet she stinks though

pretty and pink as mine,

i swear she's a narcissist cause she literally compliments herself every other page

dismissing any thought of me the way you’d walk past boxes of mac ’n’ cheese or marshmallow cereal on a shelf in the grocery store. I was kids’ stuff.

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

But I looked like an off-duty model.

Literally every other page

I would probably have had to live in Brooklyn, with roommates.

oh the horror

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.

is this irony?

“Seeing the folks? Where are you from again? Albuquerque?” “My parents are dead.”

What kind of therapist repeatedly forgets this big piece of info

He worked as a portfolio manager in the Twin Towers,

STOP NAH HES GONE

I pretended I wasn’t.

Ngl although reva is lowks self centered,this chick acts like shes any better,tbh she's 10x worse and even more insufferable

It made me a little jealous to think of Reva being depressed and dependent on anyone but me.

I kind of like the Twin Towers. It’s peaceful up there. And I think if I start things off on the right foot, with a whole new group of people, they won’t treat me like a slave. Nobody ever listened to me at Ken’s office. We’d have these strategy meetings, and instead of letting me speak, they’d make me take notes like I’m some nineteen-year-old intern. And Ken treated me like shit at

work because he didn’t want people to know we’re involved. Were involved.

Everything’s going to be different now,”

“When I bought this for you, it was simply because I wanted you to have it. I’ll really miss working with you. PX.”