Read and Hated Book for 2023

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Being a white New Yoker with a passive income and having a huge inheritance and a very detached upbringing and gaining an alienating feeling from a vain mother and a dying father (of cancer) does not give you the privilege to be an ass. Scapegoating your will to live with a cocktail of sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medicine, while having a best friend getting tired of your hipster lifestyle does not even give you a pass to weaponize your sickness in how you live your life.

A Mental Health issue is not a badge, you daft.

I believe that a Mental Health problem is a collective symptom, just like my first 2023 read has been themed upon. And the only way for us to address it is to make steps collectively, or even gain connection of oneself through our very human ways (as Laing mentioned, made through art).

This White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is very antithesis of my own psyche. My Year of Rest and Relaxation was supposed to make a full circle trip of New York, since Laing's The Lonely City is my first read this year. And her stark constrast with my very Filipino physique dwelling in a dismal third world nation and continuously tanking inflation feels like a slap to my face, like WALA KANG KARAPATANG MA-DEPRESS KASI MAHIRAP KA, WALA KANG EXTRANG KITA, AT HINDING-HINDI KA PAGMAMANAHAN NG MAGULANG MO. Feels like an outright dismissal of my ugly crying sessions, or how I manage my anxieties and my languishing lifestyle.

I do not recommend reading this book if you have not felt detached first. Or maybe if you are a WASP like this woman, maybe you can really relate. Heck, you might even try those downers and lull you to sleep for two months. Basta huwag mo akong lapitan; ayoko sa lahat ang asal-hayop na kaburgisan.

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