Words: Izzy Stokes @isabellarosemari

The year is 2020, we all believed that the mirroring of figures in this year would bring us promises of joy, self love, freedom, and essentially our most obnoxious ‘glow ups’ to date. January was a steady, albeit boozy start to the year, followed by the total shit show that was February, but the reassurance of having 10 months to get your shit together kept your spirits high, and your sense of responsibility minimal.

But then, there are whispers, deadly virus? Spreading in Italy? You practically guffaw at the news, the girls bring it up at boozy brunch, you’re six mimosas deep and planning to meet that graphic designer off hinge later; you couldn’t give a toss about current affairs in this moment in time.

A few weeks pass by, and the BBC updates on your phone are becoming increasingly threatening, there are now 60 confirmed cases of Corona Virus in the UK, and everyone is bulk buying toilet paper, by the way, why the fuck did everyone do that? Now it’s nearing the end of March, you’ve been incarcerated in your own home for nearly two weeks, you’ve done more home workouts then you ever actually worked out, you’ve eaten all your special quarantine snacks, had at least one daily nap, harassed your Instagram followers on the hour, for every one of your waking hours, and you are now knee deep into Gilmore Girls, which you watch while trying to figure out how the hell ‘House party’ works, and why it has now become as essential as bread in people’s daily lives. You battle the aisles in Tesco Metro, trying your best to keep to social distance measures while simultaneously bumping into literally every fellow shopper, who then look at you like you’ve just spit directly in to their mouths. So I’m sure at this point in time, you’re tired of reading self-help articles, which are essentially just adverts for candles and track pants, that tell you the same shitty things over and over for dealing with the pandemic, “Face time a friend”, “Have a bath”, “Bake a fucking cake”, like we get it, we aren’t dogs that need to be reminded to go for walks, Susan! Sometimes self-help pieces can feel extremely flimsy and obvious, and people do not need the obvious stated to them in a worldwide panic.

You watch the daily news updates, people are dying in their hundreds, you have no idea how to physically, let alone emotionally, deal with this crisis, so you do what you know (or don’t know) best, you write a mildly ironic, vaguely comedic article reflecting on a book that you read last year which mildly parallels this situation.

I decided to revisit Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My year of Rest and Relaxation” during this period as what makes it such a compelling book to read in this exact moment of the time space continuum is how the storyline is completely parallel in many senses to our lives at present.

The narrator, who’s name we never learn, is a “Hot shit” young, blonde, and rich, woman who decides to bail on her stuffy art gallery job after becoming a millennial orphan. She spends 15 months in her New York apartment during the year 2000 consuming various sedatives, so she can essentially sleep through an entire year of her life, in order to wake up taking form of a better version of herself. This butterfly-from-cocoon mentality is what trailblazes across social media in our reality, the idea that through this isolation, we will be forced to make peace with our inner demons, confront the ugliest parts of ourselves, as there are no prior distractions like before, and that maybe, if we do enough squats, bake enough banana bread, and call our mothers once a week, we will emerge from the flames like a phoenix rising.

There is an element of competitiveness within this mind-set, that we should use this time for self development, crunch the numbers on our souls, become the more lovable, fuckable, intellectually developed, versions of oneself, as this is the only ‘empty’ time on our late – capitalist schedules. But similarly to our protagonist in ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation” as she watches VHS re-runs of her favourite Whoopi Goldberg movies, and mass orders lingerie online, are we not just metaphorically guzzling benzos, and sleeping through the crisis through our Yoga with Adrienne videos, Self-improvement pills, and meaningless mantra creation?

Sometimes you have to sit with the pain, or the harsh actuality of life, and perhaps there is not always a silver lining, or lesson, or even meaning in situations, as COVID-19 has forced us to come to terms with the reality that we do not have agency over our lives, only the small compartments within them, and that life as we understand it is changeable, fragile, and fleeting.

We use our distractions as a form of gaining back the assumed control over ourselves, and although this is a wholly positive form of dealing with hardship, it’s only because we have the privilege to do so. Just like the unnamed narrator of the novel, we have the means to “Rest and Relax”, to ignore bleak truths, we can play the Nintendo Wii, or face time our friends, we can afford to binge watch Sex & the City, or buy the ingredients for a three course meal, whereas some people are not so lucky, our key workers - frontline workers of the NHS, who do not get the chance to undergo a personality transplant in this time, as they are busy saving lives.

Ottessa Moshfegh “My year of rest and relaxation,” book cover design by Darren Hagger, painting by Jacques-Louis David. No Copyright infringement intended.

We are living in a terrifying time, where we may or may not be back to what we define as ‘normal’ living for another six months, in these months we will learn new things, share experiences with loved ones, change our opinions on what we previously understood as true, and ultimately we will grow as people, but this does not have to become an ego centric mission of self improvement, fuelled by what society defines as ‘productivity’, instead this could be a time of simple reflection, where you treat yourself with kindness, partake in hobbies simply for enjoyment, and exercise just because you felt like it that day.

There is no finish line for this race, and the more we over stimulate and compete, the further we move away from actual fulfilment or growth, to the point where we may as well be binging on Xanax for the next six months.

In these times, self-care is vital, but we cannot deny our realities, we must stay mindful of the fact that people are suffering right now, the vulnerable, the elderly, those with anxiety based conditions, keyworkers, people who cannot afford their rent, and most working class families who are having to school their children from home. It can be very easy for us to be wrapped up in the creature comforts that surround us, or to become self –focused, both of which are healthy and important, yet during these times community and looking outside ourselves are vital too. Call your friends that are alone, check in with neighbours if you can, consider a volunteering position if you have the resources to do so. Let’s not let advertising agencies decide on what self growth is, and lets break away from the exhibitionist flauntations on Instagram and truly nurture ourselves.

I hope you’re all doing okay in these times of uncertainty, and if you get a chance, read “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”…the novel is darkly funny, and provides some food for thought in the most ironic sense during this bleak time.

Our Year of Rest and Relaxation