One of my favorite novels from 2018 was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. It tells the story of a New York City woman so bored and depressed that she decides to drug-sleep her way through an entire year. Her life becomes a pattern of sleeping, waking briefly to eat takeout, then watching TV until she falls back asleep. The plot gets more complicated than that (and darker and more absurd), but throughout this year I often came back to the fantasy of that premise: why not just sleep away an entire year?

Somewhere around the middle of May I hit that first breaking point where I yelled into the ether “Why is this pandemic still happening?? It’s SPRING and we’re still indoors! This isn’t fair!” Hahahahaaa, I know, how spoiled and naive just two months in. But at two months in it truly did feel too long. And I began to fantasize about sleeping for a very long time. How nice would it be to check out completely and wake up in May 2021 when everything would be back to normal? (Hahahaaa, still way too optimistic.)

This is definitely a fantasy brought on by depression. I was feeling like I was deep down in the bottom of a hole that I couldn’t get out of. And then I would feel guilty for being depressed at all since I’ve been in such a privileged position ever since our world shut down in March: I am still fully employed, I don’t have any health issues, I don’t have any children or even a dog to take care of, and I live with a loving partner. I am so lucky. And yet I was still at the bottom of that hole.

As more time went on though, and as I began to accept that my new lifestyle wasn’t ending anytime soon, I thought: maybe it’s OK to be in this hole, but still be awake? I can be mad and I can be sad without sleeping through those feelings. It helps that alongside a pandemic, our country also went through another wave of reckoning with racism, and I, along with so many other white people, stopped and thought about how to be a better person. I’m still figuring it out, but I do know that shutting out the world won’t help.

I am still having days where I feel down in the bottom of a hole and I expect that will be my default mode for quite a while. But at least now I can see the light at the top because I’m focusing on the things I can control. I can still read and learn. I can still write in ALL CAPS with a red pen in my journal like an angry teenager. I can still contribute time and money to my community. I can still go for long walks and runs and then come home and scream into my towel (try it, you’ll love it). Feeling my feelings is going to be the healthiest way for me to get to May 2021 and beyond.

I should also note that I have the added privilege of going to therapy, which has been a great help in getting me to peer beyond the walls of the dark hole (yes I’m still going with this analogy). If you’re also having a hard time and you have access to therapy, I cannot endorse it enough. (Depending on your financial and insurance situation, you might even qualify for free therapy, so it’s always worth researching.)

Keep feeling your feelings, friends. Write them in a journal. Put them on a sign and join a protest. Scream them into your towel. Whatever you need to do to take care of yourself and stay awake.

OK BYE 2020!!