My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

It was easy to ignore things that didn’t concern me.

I steered clear of anything that might pique my intellect or make me envious or anxious.

I took a Polaroid of her one night and stuck it into the frame of the mirror in the living room. Reva thought it was a loving gesture, but the photo was really meant as a reminder of how little I enjoyed her company if I felt like calling her later while I was under the influence.

Im dead

Sleep is key. Most people need upwards of fourteen hours or so. The modern age has forced us to live unnatural lives.

Im always saying that

He was thirty-three,

NOOOOOO

Over the next eight years, Trevor would periodically deplete his self-esteem in relationships with older women, i.e., women his age, then return to me to reboot. I was always available.

its giving tell me lies

I’ve often wondered what she was on that year, and if she’d been slipping me any of it.

:(

“You know, when you were a baby, I crushed Valium into your bottle?

So she wasnt wrong

Whoopi Goldberg was my main hero. I spent a lot of time staring at her on screen and picturing her vagina. Solid, honest, magenta.

Girl literally what

When I explained for the third time that both my parents had died, that my mother had killed herself, Dr. Tuttle unscrewed the cap of her value-size bottle of Afrin, twirled around in her chair, tilted her head back so that she was looking at me upside down, and started sniffing. “I’m listening,” she said. “It’s allergies, and now I’m hooked on this nasal spray. Please continue. Your parents are dead, and . . . ?” “And nothing. It’s fine. But I’m still not sleeping well.” “What a conundrum.”

dr. tuttle is iconic (derogatory)

He worked as a portfolio manager in the Twin Towers,

oh girl don’t tell me……

I wondered if I’d been expecting guests.

this made me laugh

He looked to me like a child molester. All those men did. But anyone would, in the right light, I thought—even I did.

literally what on earth are you talking about

Just the thought of Whoopi soothed me. She really was my hero.

😭😭😭

Occasionally, over the years, when I’d felt abandoned and scared and heard a voice in my mind say, “I want my mommy,” I took the note out and read it as a reminder of what she’d actually been like and how little she cared about me. It helped. Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.

okay maybe i do feel bad for narrator

If anything was going to make me cry, it was the thought of losing Dr. Tuttle. What if she lost her license?

GIRL SHE SHOULD

“No man is worth paying for,”

I watched the black girl spread the lips of her vagina with long, sharp, pink fingernails. The inside of her glistened. I thought of Whoopi Goldberg.

ENOUGH

Thank God for Whoopi. Nothing was sacred. Whoopi was proof.

I dont even know what to say anymore

I’ve had such a day, I can’t even tell you.” But there she was, telling me.

“That I’m getting a promotion, and they’re transferring me to the Towers.

NAHHHHHH SHES GONNA DIE TOO

“Men don’t feel bad the way you want them to,”

I kind of like the Twin Towers. It’s peaceful up there.

Not for long

I needed Dr. Tuttle’s unwavering trust. There was no shortage of psychiatrists in New York City, but finding one as irresponsible and weird as Dr. Tuttle would be a challenge I didn’t think I could handle.

Now write this down because I have a feeling you’re too psychotic to remember:

PLEASEEEEEE

Her name tag said her name was Tammy. The worst name on Earth.

okay ron swanson

Oh, the absurdity.

Thats what ive been thinking this whole time sister

I watched Law & Order. I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched Friends, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The West Wing,

neeeeed to see narrator interact with toby ziegler

“I guess Whoopi Goldberg is my hero.” “A family friend?” “She took care of me after my mother died,” I said. Who hadn’t heard of Whoopi Goldberg?

what the hell, sure at this point

“I guess Whoopi Goldberg is my hero.” “A family friend?” “She took care of me after my mother died,” I said. Who hadn’t heard of Whoopi Goldberg?

oh my god

Dr. Tuttle was obviously crazy.

Duh i mean what are we doing here

then stuck my head in the freezer and found a bottle of Jose Cuervo wrapped in a crinkly white plastic bag. I was glad it wasn’t a human head.

Yeah me too i guess

vestibule,

hi bncmap

“Hopefully I won’t ever need to see you again,” I told her. “People say that to me all the time,” she said. That was the last time we spoke.

mysterious

“They kind of fit,” she said, trying on an unworn pair of Manolo Blahniks. “Good enough.”

okay carrie bradshaw

I don’t starve to death or break any bones,

its kinda so shocking to me that narrator is not suicidal

If something happened to Ping Xi, I could die in here,

whatever could happen to someone in new york in 2001

Ping Xi was dutiful about the calendar and the garbage. One time I wrote a Post-it note and asked for Canada Dry instead of Schweppes.

girl after my own heart

I asked for a candle to burn while I bathed. During this period, my waking hours were spent gently, lovingly, growing reaccustomed to a feeling of cozy extravagance.

Wait i kinda love this for her

But I knew that even if I could go back, if such a thing were possible with exactitude, in life or in dreams, there was really no point.

hour. I knew she was just trying to fill the air, take up the time until she could go and leave me forever. That’s what it felt like at least. I can’t say it didn’t hurt me that she held herself at such a distance. But to confront her about it would have been cruel. I had no right to make any demands.

very self aware

This would be the last time I’d see her in person.

yeah...

So I did not step back. Instead, I put my hand out. I touched the frame of the painting. And then I placed my whole palm on the dry, rumbling surface of the canvas, simply to prove to myself that there was no God stalking my soul. Time was not immemorial. Things were just things.

Then I called Reva. She answered on the fourth ring, panting and tense. “I’m at the gym,” she said. “Can we talk later?” We never did.

rest in peace reva

Each time I see the woman leap off the Seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower—one high-heeled shoe slipping off and hovering up over her, the other stuck on her foot as though it were too small, her blouse untucked, hair flailing, limbs stiff as she plummets down, one arm raised, like a dive into a summer lake—I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it’s her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I’ll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.