My Year of Rest and Relaxation

She was competitive about beauty and “life wisdom.” Her envy was very self-righteous. Reva, however, studied Cosmo and watched Sex and the City. She felt she wasn’t equipped to handle life, she wrote, that she felt like an alien, a freak, that consciousness was intolerable and that she was scared of going crazy. “Good-bye,” she wrote, then gave a list of people she’d known. When she finally let go, she was crying and smiling.