It was 3am in the summer of 2017, and I was lying in a triple bunk bed in a hostel in London, listening to the sounds of the 14 other people in my dormitory snoring. I had been working unpaid internships in the fashion industry in London for the past 18 months and living in £12-a-night hostels. When I couldn’t sleep, I would watch TV on my beaten-up phone to drown out the snores. I was watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, an absurdist comedy about a woman who moves to New York after 15 years imprisoned in a doomsday cult’s underground bunker.
Her relentless positivity often inspired me to keep going, but on that particular night, the opposite happened: Kimmy gave me the courage to give up.
Growing up in Essex, I dreamed about a future in fashion. I saw myself living in an artist’s warehouse, working at Vogue and being invited to the hottest events. This wasn’t the reality. I was 23 and technically employed by one of the biggest fashion magazines, one I grew up worshipping. But as an intern I was paid nothing. I worked 9am to 5pm, often relegated to the fashion closet for hours on end. Then, from 7pm to 2am I did various actual jobs, from flyering for gyms to manning the door of a strip club, trying to scrape together enough money for my hostel bill. Most hostels provided a free breakfast, which was my only hot meal of the day. At the beginning of the week I would buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and ate sandwiches for dinner. My parents supported my dream but it was up to me to make it work financially.
I desperately wanted to look put-together to fit in at work but it wasn’t safe to leave anything in the hostel, so I had to carry all my belongings around in a backpack. One day my only pair of shoes, silver glittery New Look ballet pumps, fell apart. I hid in the office’s fashion closet and taped my shoe back together. When I looked up I was surrounded by beautiful designer heels.
I tried to keep my situation a secret. One fashion PR firm I had interned at found out I was living in hostels and told my whole office that I was homeless. My boss publicly gave me £100 in cash and said I was “so brave”: the same boss who paid me in “experience” and “exposure”.
Every unpaid internship came with the suggestion that it “could lead to a full-time job”, encouraging me to believe that I was on the brink of my big break: that if I was just in the right place at the right time, saying the right things and wearing the right outfit, I might make it. But it had been over a year, and the only interns I ever saw progress seemed to already have connections.
In the episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt I watched that night in the hostel – Kimmy Gives Up! – her optimistic veneer finally cracks. Her landlord Lillian offers her some well-timed advice: “I know you’re tough and you never give up, but sometimes the hardest thing you can do is just quit and walk away.” Lillian also sings a spoof called Just Go On, a sarcastic parody of Tomorrow from the musical Annie. Somewhere in that minute and 53 seconds, everything shifted into place.
I remember being in that triple bunk bed with tears silently streaming down my face. I’d been so positive, just like Kimmy, and bending over backwards for these internships – but I couldn’t pretend any more. The next day, I quit. I told my boss I had run out of money, was living in hostels and I couldn’t work for free any more. She was unbothered. She made it clear I was utterly replaceable. But another well-placed quote from Lillian echoed in my ears: “The sooner you quit something that stinks, the sooner you can find something that doesn’t. Save your hope for that”. So I did.
I have since built a career in film and TV, mainly comedies. Just Go On has become something I listen to often when I’m torn between staying or leaving. If I had never walked out of that office, I wouldn’t have found what was waiting for me all along.
