This essay is part of HuffPost’s series “ This Made Me ,” a collection of stories about the pop culture that moves us. The night I lost my last job in corporate fashion, I walked home crying with an overflowing cardboard box. This had been my biggest role and my highest salary to date: working for the female head of a then-popular flash-sale-shopping website. I’d approached the job with giddiness and hope. Four months after I started, my charismatic boss took a mental health sabbatical and didn’