Love In The Jungle by Ann Walker Page B

bit of its strength. “Dad… It’s humiliating.”
    “You were fired for something you believe in.” I heard the
kettle shrieking in the background, and sighed. “I know it doesn’t make it any
better today, but one day you’ll look back on this knowing that you did the
right thing.”
    “They’ll just get someone else to do the cutting,” I argued,
suddenly feeling a little stupid. “People are still going to be let go… I’m
just one of them now too.”
    “Sleep on it.”
    I fell quiet for a long moment, my mind a mess of incoherent
thoughts, broken only by my dad’s voice. “So, what else is new?”
    I didn’t have it in me to make chitchat about the rest of my
life; work had been all-consuming this past year, so I didn’t exactly have time
for much of a social life. Maybe now I could… see movies, or something. After
giving my dad an adequate rundown of my pathetic social endeavors as of late,
which included finding a sale on detergent at the grocery store down the street
from me and a solo trip to a music festival in my favorite park for all of
thirty seconds (I’d been exhausted from a full day at the office), I made my
excuses and said my goodbyes.
    Mom was going to call me when she got home from work, so I
had that exciting conversation to look forward to, during which I was sure I’d
rehash everything from today in agonizing detail as she chirped about silver
linings.
    Too depressed to sort through my desk things, I grabbed the
remote and turned on the TV, then buried myself beneath a quilt. At least good
ol’ TV had no desire to analyze my recent firing. Good ol’ TV was always there
to distract, never to judge. Besides, I can’t remember the last time I watched
TV in the afternoon, so there was that.

Chapter Two
    W hy does everyone on social media look so
accomplished?
    With one hand in a chip bowl, laptop perched on my knees,
and my free hand strictly for scrolling, I wasted away yet another unemployed
day online. A week had gone by since I’d been “let go” from the company, and I
could slowly feel all my brainpower oozing out of me with each unproductive day
that passed. I had also taken up talking to myself while puttering around my
apartment, an embarrassing tic I hadn’t ever done before. Most of my friends
were coupled up, but I still had the opportunity to grab drinks and dinner here
and there—each time winding up spectacularly drunk and blaming it on my recent
firing.
    But everyone I knew worked during the day; had weird hours
that saw them snoozing in the afternoons; or they traveled for work. So, while
my nights were open to the possibility of some social contact outside my
parents and my younger brother, my days were filled with, well, just me.
    “ I’m not all that interesting, honestly.”
    My online friend group is rife with drama, however, and I
could usually spend a few hours scrolling through all the various feeds. It was
like having reality TV without the commercials or drunken sobbing—unless you
counted my drunken sobbing. I’d branded the people I was friends with
and followed into two groups: accomplished adults and forever teenagers. A lot
of my high school friends were forever teenagers. Most of my college group was
accomplished adults.
    I feel the more time I spend online I felt myself dangling
precariously between the two groups, threatening to drop off into the more
adolescent.
    Scrolling through a Twitter feed from a girl I went to high
school with, I smirked at her incredibly passive-aggressive comments toward
another girl we mutually knew, and I felt like I was in twelfth grade all over
again. Once the 140 character posts turned into song lyrics, I clicked to
another tab, all the while feeding a continuous stream of chips in my mouth.
With my greasy blonde hair chucked up in a bun, chip crumbs on my chin and
ratty college t-shirt, I was definitely a pitiful sight.
    But at least no one could see me slightly judging them from
the other side of a