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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Self-Care, Self-Destruction, and Self-Indulgence
Isolation
Meaninglessness
Repression
Summary
Analysis
The narrator calls Dr. Tuttle the next morning to complain about her insomnia, only this time, she’s actually telling the truth. She lies and claims not to have tried the Infermiterol yet—it would be too risky for the narrator to let Dr. Tuttle know that the drug has been making her black out and do things that are so out of character for her. So Dr. Tuttle prescribes the narrator more Infermiterol and more Ambien. After the narrator hangs up, she finds a notice from the unemployment office—apparently, she forgot to call them to check in. There’s also a postcard from Dr. Tuttle for her missed appointment, and a bunch of junk mail. She finds a Christmas card from Reva thanking her for being a great friend through the tough times. The narrator deems the card embarrassingly badly written and throws it away.
The narrator lies to Dr. Tuttle about the blackouts because she knows the blackouts would raise concern with a doctor—even one as disreputable as Dr. Tuttle. That the narrator recognizes her recent behavior as troubling and yet takes steps to ensure that she has more of the medication that has been causing that troubling behavior underscores the self-destructive nature of her hibernation project. Her callous choice to discard Reva’s Christmas Card further highlights this self-destructive behavior: time and again, the narrator’s unconscious or semi-conscious actions (going out to a club, adjusting the TV volume to hear the comforting lull of human voices) have suggested that she craves and needs human contact, and yet in her waking moments, she rejects her only friend’s efforts to maintain a relationship with her.
Themes
Finally the narrator stumbles upon a letter from her parents’ estate lawyer. He informs her that the current tenant at the house upstate is moving out, and he recommends putting the house on the market instead of searching for a replacement tenant. The narrator imagines the house in her head, and she considers how many of her parents’ skin cells remain there since the tenant moved in. She feels a sudden sadness within her. Not knowing what else to do, she calls the estate lawyer and agrees to sell the house.
Per the estate lawyer’s advice, it could be in the narrator’s financial interest to sell her parents’ house upstate. But her impulsive choice to follow that advice also resonates symbolically, reflecting her tendency to repress or avoid the underlying causes of her unhappiness (memories of her parents and her unresolved grief over their deaths) rather than confronting and working through those sources of pain.
Themes
The narrator goes outside and wanders around, going to the bodega and then to Rite Aid. When she returns, a bouquet of roses has arrived for her. At first, she thinks they’re from Trevor, but then she sees the note attached to them: “To my muse. Call me and we’ll get started.” Ping Xi’s business card is also attached. She returns to her unit and takes some pills. She drifts in and out of sleep. She has a dream she’s in a hospital, where a nurse walks toward her, saying, “I’m so, so sorry.” But the narrator turns away and imagines Whoopi Goldberg in Star Trek instead. She asks Whoopi to help her but gets no response. Suddenly, she thinks she hears high heels hitting the sidewalk, and thinks it might be Reva. The thought rouses her from sleep.
Ping Xi’s message, however vague, seems to suggest that he and the narrator agreed to collaborate on some kind of art project. Despite her claims to hate Ping Xi and the sensationalist, vapid art he creates, the narrator’s unconscious actions suggest that she wants to be involved in his work and with the audience for whom he creates it. The dream featuring Whoopi Goldberg, whose movies the narrator has used to get her through her self-imposed isolation, symbolizes the futility and self-destructive nature of the narrator’s hibernation project. She believes that taking some time off from her life will save her from her misery, but Whoopi’s silence in response to the narrator’s cry for help suggests that avoiding one’s life is not the way to improve it.
Themes
The narrator feels odd as she looks out her window and investigates the sidewalk below. She takes more pills and sits on the couch. She realizes she “want[s] the old half life back,” the one she had before her VCR was broken, when Reva would come over and complain about her life. She wonders if Reva will grow up and leave her behind now that Ken has broken up with her and she’s gotten the promotion. She zones out and watches TV.
The narrator’s realization that she “want[s] the old half life back” should give her pause, indicating to her that pushing everyone away is making her more miserable, not rejuvenated, as she has wanted it to. But as suddenly as the realization befalls her, she pushes it aside and watches TV instead. This scene further highlights the narrator’s self-destructive habits.
Themes
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On January 20, the narrator goes downtown to see Dr. Tuttle, feeling drunk and like she’s dying. She decides to tell Dr. Tuttle this. Each time the narrator tries to bring up the issues with the Infermiterol, though, Dr. Tuttle cuts her off, and eventually the narrator gives up. She also has to remind Dr. Tuttle, once more, that her parents are dead. Dr. Tuttle examines the narrator’s face and notes that it is “slightly off center” but that it’s nothing to worry about. She instructs the narrator to double her dosage of Infermiterol and sends her on her way. On the cab ride home, the narrator looks at her reflection in the window and, deciding that her face is totally normal and centered, deems Dr. Tuttle “obviously crazy.”
Though the narrator initially seemed uninterested in reflecting on her self-destructive behavior, her sudden willingness to tell Dr. Tuttle the truth about her mental state suggests that she may finally be ready to feel her painful emotions and change her unhealthy behavior. This makes Dr. Tuttle’s negligent refusal to listen to the narrator all the more frustrating and tragic. Still, the narrator’s confidence that Dr. Tuttle is “obviously crazy” offers a glimmer of hope that she may find it within herself to turn over a new leaf and start practicing forms of self-care that will actually help her.
Themes
The narrator returns to her apartment. It’s not long before Reva drops by, unannounced. The narrator is almost happy she’s there. Reva announces that she has scheduled an abortion, but she wants the narrator to assure her that she’s “doing the right thing.” The narrator doesn’t do this. Instead, she asks if Reva would like something to calm her down. She offers her an Infermiterol. Reva accepts, but warily. She suggests looking it up, but the narrator promises her she can’t: this is only a sample, as the drug isn’t on the market yet. However, she promises Reva that it’s safe to take.
The narrator actively stops Reva’s attempt to address her struggles in a healthy way by confronting them directly and talking through them with a friend. Instead, she offers Reva Infermiterol, the potentially dangerous side effects of which she has first-hand knowledge. In this scene, she continues to act self-destructively: despite her obvious loneliness, she cuts off any opportunity to bond or interact meaningfully with another person.
Themes
Reva relents, washing down the pill with a can of diet soda she removes from her purse. Reva exclaims when she sees Saved by the Bell come on TV. They sit down and watch while Reva argues with herself over the little sense it makes to bring a child into such a messed-up world.
Though Reva outwardly appears in better health than the narrator, this scene reminds readers that she is just as prone to avoidant, unhealthy behavior, turning to TV and intoxication to dull the pain of confronting her struggles directly.
Themes
The narrator wakes up three days later. She’s still wearing the fur coat, but Reva is gone. She sees a Post-it note on the refrigerator bearing the message, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! xoxo.” When she goes to her medicine cabinet to find her pills, she finds that they are all gone. In a panic, she calls Reva, but Reva does not answer. She leaves a frantic voicemail in which she declares their friendship over. Desperate for some relief, she takes some Benadryl. Just then, she spots another Post-it note. This one reads, “Everything you can imagine is real.—Pablo Picasso.” When she realizes that this one is written in Ping Xi’s handwriting, she feels suddenly ill, runs to the bathroom, and throws up.
Reva’s message (and the missing medicine supply) implies that, at some point in the past three days, she and the narrator had a discussion in which the narrator acknowledged that her ongoing hibernation project is unhealthy and expressed a desire to stop abusing pills and regain control of her life. Notably, the narrator places all blame for the missing pills on Reva, ignoring the possibility that she herself may have agreed to the intervention and just doesn’t remember it. Yet again, the narrator’s waking actions are self-destructive and contradict the self-preserving impulses she expresses in her unconscious state. The note from Ping Xi is the third time he's come up since the narrator lost her job at Ducat, likely foreshadowing his reentry into her life in one way or another.
Themes
The narrator looks in the mirror and realizes she is furious with Reva, and she is also afraid. She thinks about how Reva is always saying she loves her and wonders if maybe “that’s why [she] hated [Reva].” She wonders if maybe she should have stolen her mother’s pills, like Reva stole hers. She thinks about her mother’s corpse in its coffin. She wonders if her mother blamed her—if she’d secretly wanted the narrator to take her pills. The narrator wants her own pills badly.
The narrator exhibits a willingness to self-reflect here when she wonders whether she hates Reva because Reva’s concern reminds her of all the ways she failed her own mother. This thought shows the degree to which the narrator continues to struggle with unresolved guilt over her parents’ deaths despite her claims to the contrary: she feels immense guilt that she could have (and was expected to) prevent her mother’s death.
Themes
The narrator ventures to the Upper West Side, to Reva’s apartment. The neighborhood hasn’t much changed since graduation. You can still get cheap pizza by the slice there. Maybe that’s why Reva likes it: “Cheap binges.” The narrator has often thought it was “pathetic” of Reva to stick around the area after graduation, but she understands the choice, too: “there was stability in living in the past.”
The narrator’s criticism of Reva here for “living in the past” is ironic, given her own inability to get over Trevor or to work through her unresolved grief over her parents’ deaths. Once more, she indulges her own shortcomings but ridicules others for theirs.
Themes
The narrator reaches Reva’s apartment and rings the buzzer. There’s no response, so she takes her spare key and lets herself in. The place is dim. She calls out for Reva, but Reva is not there. As she wanders through Reva’s apartment, she imagines Reva asleep in her bed each night, “probably drunk and full of Aspartame and Pepcid,” and then she imagines her waking up in the morning and assuming her “mask of composure.” She thinks it’s hypocritical of Reva to accuse her of having problems, and she hates her for it. Finally, the narrator reaches the bathroom, where she finds her stolen pills. She breathes a sigh of relief.
Rather than feeling concern for Reva’s health, the narrator feels anger at Reva for her hypocritical judgment. Meanwhile, the narrator’s immense relief at finding her stolen pills indicates that she does indeed have a problem—and perhaps a more serious one than she’s willing to admit—but the reality of this is lost on her.
Themes
Reunited with her precious pills, the narrator imagines what Reva might say in this moment: that Reva has stood by long enough as the narrator has slowly killed herself with the prescription pills, that the narrator will thank her someday. The narrator imagines her own dismissive responses to Reva.
The narrator continues to exhibit self-indulgent and self-destructive behavior. The hypothetical scenario that plays out in her head suggests that she actually enjoys it when Reva expresses concern for her and tries to intervene in her hibernation plan because it grants her the opportunity to shock and disappoint Reva with her nonchalance and her indifference to her own life and health.
Themes
Suddenly, the narrator realizes what she must do. Figuring that one tablet of Infermiterol will knock her out for three days, she hatches a plan. She takes only the Infermiterol from Reva’s. Later, she calls a locksmith, and then Dr. Tuttle, to set up one last appointment (Dr. Tuttle insists the narrator will be back).
This chapter ends with something of a cliffhanger, with the narrator referencing a major realization she has made. Given her gradual decline over the past several months and her ongoing refusal to acknowledge the severity of her struggles, the reader may surmise that whatever plan the narrator has just hatched won’t be a move in a healthy, restorative direction.
Themes
