The Runaway Child.

When you take a look at me and my two siblings, we’d all fit snugly under the title of ‘The Runaway Child’. My sister, older by eight years, began her travels when I was just nine-years-old — first to Mallorca, then to America, and finally to Australia. My brother, older by two years, waited a while longer. He took to the skies when I was 20, and what was meant to be a short visit to my sister’s home in Australia became the process of him securing permanent residency on the sunnier side of the world.

And then it was my turn.

I’d never really had any grand plans for upping and moving across the globe, and Australia, sunny as it might be, never called out to me as a place to call my home. It wouldn’t be too out of the question to say that moving here was a mistake — it was never in my plans. But moving across the world seemed like something to do, something that was big and drastic and exciting, and so I did it. I thought that it would solve a lot of my problems, or put them on hold at least. But for the second time in my life, I’m facing the harsh reality that while running away from a city might be easy, running away from yourself is not.

The first time I was forced to face this reality was around three years ago. I was 19, and I’d just made The Big Move — leaving the comfy familiarity of my hometown for the daunting, fresh streets of somewhere new. It was time to go to university, and I was ready.

In the months leading up to my move from Hull — the laughing stock of England — to Nottingham, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. My depression had well and truly taken the wheel, and I was on a road trip to nowhere great. In the space of a few short months, I lost two of my best friends because they couldn’t handle me being ‘down all of the time’, and I made a couple of very shitty decisions that lost me a few more friends in the process. By the time college was finally finished, I couldn’t have been more ready to leave.

During my final summer in Hull, the only thing I had to keep myself going was the move. I passed the time working shifts at the cinema I’d worked in for the past two years, and I waited for September. I’d thoroughly convinced myself that my problem wasn’t me, or my depression, it was the city I lived in and the people in it. I placed all of my hope on moving to Nottingham, thinking that the second I was free from the constraints of Hull, all of my weights would be lifted and I could finally be happy.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself sitting underneath the desk of my small student flat, crying and swigging vodka straight from the bottle less than two months later. I know, I know. What a cliché, right? But I couldn’t understand my sadness. I’d moved away — I was in a new city, making new friends, and having a great time. Why was I still sad?

It took me a long time to figure out that my problem wasn’t where I lived, or who my friends where. I’ve never been officially diagnosed as depressed; I was always way too ashamed to take myself off to a doctors, where I would have no answer but to shrug when they inevitably asked me what the problem was. I didn’t know why I was sad. There was no pinpoint reason. I just was, unbearably so.

Over the course of my three years in Nottingham, I stopped being so sad. I carved a place for myself in the world, and for a lot of the time I was really happy. I even had a plan for the future — to move to London with my then-girlfriend, where we would brunch every weekend and explore the city every week. We’d have kickass, high-flying jobs, we’d manage to find an apartment with some cool, exposed brick, and we’d be happy.

Unfortunately, that’s not how things worked out. She was a teetering Tetris pile of anger and anxiety, and in the end I wasn’t fast enough to keep up. For a long while, she soured Nottingham for me — I couldn’t bear to be in my favourite bar, where we’d once spent the night sinking cocktails and planning our future. It made me sick with hurt to walk down the street and remember all of the times we’d strolled the same path, hand in hand, on our way to the city.

After a soul-destroying breakup that spanned several months, I changed my phone number to stop her from contacting me and booked a flight to Australia. I didn’t move to get away from her — we were already in separate cities — but the breakup had left me worse for wear, and I thought that going somewhere new would be the best way to start a new chapter.

And now I’m here. The skies are always blue, the sea is never far away, and so far I’ve managed to avoid seeing any of the big, scary spiders. I live with my sister, who has a pool in her back garden and two adorable dogs. I have a job in a part of the city that can only be described as devastatingly hip, and thanks to the magic of social media, I’ve managed to form myself a ragtag group of gal pals. Great, right?

The other day, as my sister and I basked in the sun of her back garden, reading, she turned to me and said ‘we are so lucky, don’t you think?’ I laughed, and agreed, and went back to reading my book. But I can’t help thinking about all of the time I don’t sit in the sun and read, or take the train to the city to explore. I can’t help thinking about all of the time I spent sitting listlessly on the sofa, without the motivation to even make myself a slice of toast.

I used to think that I had SAD, more commonly known as Seasonal Affective Disorder — where your mood changes with the seasons and you find yourself becoming apathetic and sullen as the weather turns colder. But today it is a balmy 36 degrees, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve made the same mistake again. I thought that I had learnt my lesson about running away from myself, but apparently I have not.

And so yes, there is not a single cloud in the sky today. And yeah, it’s going to be a long while before the need to wear any sort of jacket arises. But my mood doesn’t rise and fall with the sun, and I am once again facing the fact that jumping on a plane doesn’t make you a new person — it just makes you the same person in a new place.