By Jessica Yi
Editor: Alloe Mak

If you follow my GoodReads, you would know that I recently finished reading the acclaimed My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I gave it a begrudging 4 stars, with the following review:

“When is my turn for a year of rest and relaxation? The tranquillity of peace and sleep is
only afforded to our rich and beautiful protagonist in this unintentionally satiric portrayal of ostentatious millennials.”

The book has many harsh critics, but it still resonates with me. Moshfegh’s unnamed protagonist experiences the debilitating desire to stay in a coma-like state throughout the book. She deploys various prescription medications and drowns herself in TV shows to do so, as she reminiscences about her equally depressing and vacuous life. By the end of the book, her reckless behaviour surprisingly ends up leading to a greater self-understanding.

So the question I ask myself—and the strongest urge I have taken from this book—is that maybe I should stick myself in a coma-like deep sleep. At the ripe age of seventeen, I think I have had enough of the dissonance. There are too many responsibilities, too many expectations, and too many holes I have to jump through to feel worthy of existence. Every failure, whether an academic setback or romantic awkwardness, feels like an affront to my identity.
Another fight with my parents over my grades.
Another friend group where I don’t belong.
Another flirtation disappearing into the tricky tract of failed romances.
It feels like no matter what I do, I always end up in this place of self-disbelief. Now certainly the logical side of my brain tells me that I’m not alone in feeling this way, but the emotional part makes it hard to bear.

What gets me through the day, is that at the end of it, I will be able to sink into a thoughtless, stressless existence.

A world without real worries, without consequences, where I can be contained in a void or perhaps in control of a bizarre story. It would all be under my control. It would all be about me. I wouldn’t have to think, feel, or experience anything that I dislike. How nice would that be? Life is quite frequently monotonous, and the sinking feeling of defeat and frustration just seeps in when you let it. The world is too real: its consequences, its impacts.

It’s too much to stomach.

The odd thing though, is that conclusion is even more bizarre. We are living human beings, yet existence can be so unpleasant that people would choose not to experience it. Perhaps not living would be a stretch, but simply not having to experience life seems like a kinder alternative.

So, I tried my own version of this reborn sleep. Since beginning this book, I have slept 8 hours each night, with a 2-hour nap after school—ignoring the missed assignments or overdue chores. My main goal? Sleeping continuously through those 8 hours. Without feeling, without thought, and without the need to experience conscientiousness. And oh boy. Each night I lay on my bed in quiet, silent, joyous rhapsody, waiting to tumble into my stupor of ignorance. But when I wake up, a deep pang of misery hits me. No longer can I live in my empty state, and my head fills with the lists and painful flashbacks of life before. Similar to this protagonist, though, my condition of chronic absence from consciousness is a debilitating one. My grades go down. I ignore my friends’ texts. I brush aside the people whose attention I previously would have vied for. I stop reading or running or doing other things I love.

Eventually, I get sloppy—I sleep past my alarm. I sleep past my work. I sleep past meetings and responsibilities. I sleep on the subway and in class. I want to be away from reality for as long as possible. My mother asks why I choose to sleep so much. I have no real answer.

Upon encountering a silver-haired woman on the subway who recognized my book, she told me that these teen and young adult years would be filled with trouble. It often feels easier to simply run from those problems. And I’ll admit, sleeping it away seems like a good solution. But unlike our eccentric main character, I don’t have the privilege of sleeping for a year straight—nor do I really want to.

In a way, I am scared to sleep as prescribed by Moshfegh. I fear letting time pass me by and letting these years that are supposed to be the best pass me by.

I realize now that I don’t have a solution here. I don’t have any advice. I am just another cog in the system who can’t find the way out. I can’t stand the mundanity of daily life like so many others, and I feel something more meaningful is missing. However, life is not that simple, and nobody can really be happy all the time. Meaning and drive come with limitations, and we are only human.

So, onwards. I engulf myself in the awkward and uncomfortable once again.

The human experience can be awful. It can be totally absurd and arbitrary. You find yourself in the most ridiculous and undeserving of situations where you realize the true fickleness of our world. Maybe that says something deep about late-stage capitalism, maybe that doesn’t. Living through it is hard, but whatever you’re running from will eventually catch up to you. Moshfegh’s lesson to us all is not that we should each take a year off of life to snooze, but that we all experience the same intolerance. As stupid as the analogy is, if it can happen to a beautiful rich girl with no responsibilities or hardships, then who’s to say your disdain for life isn’t justifiable? No one is alone in the anguish of existence, so we shouldn’t live through it alone. Life still has good to offer, and looking for an escape isn’t the real solution.