Something that really made me laugh was “walking around the garden” of her parents’ home. They’ve done well to go from a kitchen that was a plank of wood across a staircase to a garden large enough for perambulation!
Obviously we all get annoyed with Jack’s constant woe-is-me-ing when it comes to her vast privilege of a lovely home and low-effort/high-paid jobs. But the shit she puts on her family is just so graceless. There are so many people of her age who have no parents, or have been cut off by family for whatever reason, or have to care for their parents, or support them financially (not for sympathy but for e.g. I spent a recent weekend in my v. mentally unwell mum’s home trying to tackle a persistent rodent problem caused by her inability to care for herself or her home).
She has financially stable, physically proximate and caring parents. Of course they’ll have issues, Philip Larkin didn’t write his poem for nothing. But even now, they’re still just a narrative device for her: a support system, a way to illustrate how she’s been adrift for years. Same with her poor kid. But it was all of her own making and her own choice. So many people would kill to have even one parent who could help them out.
Even in this stage of supposed recovery she can’t show gratitude. Bodes well for future Tattle lolz but not for her recovery, sadly.
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