Sad and the City

When Moran was 18 or 19 she lived in London and presented a show on Channel 4. She had already written for Melody Maker and The Times. Quite something, but when she lay in bed next to her awful-sounding boyfriend, her homesickness and sense of displacement took the the bed she had at her family's home in Wolverhampton, which she shared with her sister, and elevated it to a sanctuary. This is not the first time she has referenced the safety she felt in her crowded family home.

Moran's miserable at this time in her life, but believes in 'feeling bad for love.' When I moved to London I think I believed in feeling bad for a career. I was miserable and had night-thoughts of a home. Moran wouldn't have gone back - she tried to get out as fast as possible - but I couldn't. If a relationship was a fulfilment for her, a job was that for me and as there was no relationship in Wolverhampton for her, there was, back in my university town of Keele, or my home town of Newton Abbot, no job for me. Probably she felt her 'wouldn't was also a 'couldn't'. It always looks like other people have choices, but these traps are not lacking in psychological substance, and cause anguish.

It's unhappiness that causes a longing to go somewhere else, to return home or to emigrate. Homesickness is just a symptom. Unhappiness can find us at any point in our lives and dislodge us to a place of insecurity. That's a reason to feel good for love, and for family, because security is the wellspring of happiness.