“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” -Peter Pan
Every now and then I grow restless and panicky about living here. I usually brush it off as normal for living in a place that’s a crime ridden, hurricane attracting, oil soaked roller-coaster of drama. But last night the real reason struck me.
There is a piece of me that can’t quite commit to living here. A rebellious fragment of my heart that is holding out and refusing to give all I’ve got and really nest here. And the reason is that I keep waiting for it to be taken away from me.
I guess Katrina left us all feeling a bit like that, but I am curious to know if anyone who left after the storm feels that way too? If you move away, does that feeling go away too? Or are you damaged for life, always assuming one day everything you know and love will wash away again? I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to feel this way forever, no matter where I am. Constantly denying I’m… traumatized.
And it’s not all the storm’s fault that I feel this way. Last year we almost left because of employment issues. Even though that is not an issue now, it always could be again in this unstable economy. My husband is in engineering, and now that Avondale is closing and the oil industry is seeking out people who whine less when you gush oil on their shores, if Q has to look for another engineering job it won’t likely be found here. And so I keep looking at my home like it’s an apartment, never really finishing the renovations, or keeping it up properly. I’m just gonna have to leave eventually, the broken fragment of me claims.
I suppose this sounds foreign to anyone not born here (or smitten with the place). I know most Americans leave the place they were born and wander eternally. They pitch tents wherever they find jobs. The new gypsy America. Why don’t you just get out of there? It’s just a place, I can hear my non-local friends claim. But I like the idea of community, and running into people I know, and having my history all around me. I love this city’s libertine nature and respect for joie de vivre over work. But it comes at a steep price. Sometimes too steep.
My one attempt at not living here for a year failed miserably. Granted, I chose a bad year, the one right after Katrina. So I was homesick, and felt like I should have been here getting dirty and not sitting in Seattle coffeehouses with a bunch of clueless scenesters. And so I came back, and got dirty. But still, there’s that floating, lost piece of me. Telling me that any moment it’s all over for me here, and that I’m only postponing the inevitable and should have stayed where I was. My plan is to stay here as long as possible. To take it all in as long as I can. But I do wonder if that’s the right choice sometimes. That maybe those who left had it right, no matter how much it hurt/hurts.
So I guess as we lead up to the fifth anniversary of Katrina, I’m less curious how the people here are doing, and more curious how the people who left are doing. Did you leave right after the storm, or did you leave last month? Doesn’t matter. Did you leave because you had to, or because you wanted to and now had an excuse? Did you leave and come back again? And then leave and come back AGAIN? I know a few who have. Do you prefer where you live now? Or do you just stay there because it’s easier than fighting the bullshit to return to Nola? Do you miss ‘home’, or did you never look back? Send me stories, blogs, articles, or just leave a comment… I want to know.
Photo: Back of the old Jackson Barracks from the Arabi side, less than a month after Katrina. The water in the street is actually from Hurricane Rita, which passed two days before this photo was taken.
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I’d be curious to know this too. We thought about leaving a whole bunch of times, especially in the first couple of years after Katrina, but we never did. I don’t want to have to leave, but there is an on-edge feeling that we may be forced to at some point…
I think for anyone who’s gone through a traumatic experience (disaster, death of close loved ones, combat), that experience remains with them and they almost expect it to happen again. Like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. “It happened once, and it was really bad, and what if it happens again? It could. Can I handle it again?” It kind of rides around with you all of your life. Like an object just outside your field of vision. There, existing, not necessarily getting in the way, but getting your attention now and then.
Yeah, and it does just kind of hover there. Not really bugging me too often. I guess I should just learn to live with it. I don’t think where I am located will matter much. Plus, people all over the world deal with shit worse than this every day. We’re just so sheltered in America.
I ignored a lot of ptsd signs early on because we were so busy cleaning up and dealing with ‘practical’ matters. But I remember in the 1-6 months after the storm I kept having bouts of extreme nausea followed by stars and blackouts. I even passed out next to my car in the Rouses parking lot on Tchoup & Napoleon once, about 8 weeks after the storm. When I came to I sat on the curb holding my head for a minute and thought, ‘I don’t have time for this shit’. And then got up and went grocery shopping.
*as if* anyone who left New Orleans after Katrina uses the internet.
Clearly I don’t know this joke.
I left in 2006 and really miss home. The homesick feeling has never gone away even though I love my life here. I wish to move back home after retirement. I sometimes resent the fact that the term “cautiously optimistic” has been a part of my vocabulary since the fall of 2005. It’s a phrase I sometimes use when asked by well-meaning Europeans how I feel about Louisiana. I wish that from time to time I could list things I love about my hometown without having Post-Katrina life and the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe inevitably pop up in the same conversation. It seems as though there is a hole in my heart that stays hollowed out by anger, anxiety, dread, and a sense of loss. I realize at the same time that so many Louisianians and other Gulf Coast residents have suffered far more than I have, and I ache for them right now more than I can try in earnest to be cautiously optimistic about the future of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
Yeah, I only know a few people that never looked back on this place. Most miss it terribly. I guess there is no healing then. I just gotta learn to live with it whether I’m here or not.
Thank you for your reply. Please don’t think that there is no healing. I think it’s sometimes difficult to see or feel some of the healing because of the attendant pain. Also, please know that I applaud you and others who work to make New Orleans a better place and as such, greatly contribute to the healing.
We had to move away for job reasons in 2002, and we kept the house we have with the idea of renting it out, but also with the idea that we’d have a place when we returned sometime.
I’ll never forget, at my Queens synagogue, being there for my last board meeting and, when it was announced that Dan and I were moving back, a friend of ours stood up and indignantly asked us if we’d known all the time we were in NYC that we were going to go back to New Orleans. I said yes, but I didn’t think we’d be coming back so soon (it was four years in Queens, then back to NOLA). Even though Dan’s job was in Baton Rouge (and he still has to commute there a couple of times a week), we knew we were NOT going to live there. It’s always been New Orleans for us.
There are two kinds of people out there – those who love New Orleans and those who cannot stand it. We are staunchly in the former category…which means that no matter where you are or where you might end up, a part of the city and its life is always with you. And it’ll hit you when you least expect it sometimes. Like when I caught an episode of “American Routes” on Manhattan’s WFUV station in which Nick Spitzer ordered from the Verti Marte, then interviewed the delivery guy who brought his food to the studio. That had me exclaiming aloud in the car, “Damn, I miss New Orleans!” I thank our stars every day that we got the chance to move back here.
Can people like us live elsewhere? Yeah, but it’ll be an American version of our Jewish heritage: a New Orleans diaspora experience. And the people who don’t care about or have never been to New Orleans won’t really get it. That’s how it’ll be, and that’s what one will have to make their peace with when the time comes.
I’ve considered leaving/returning again for some perspective, but it seems like such a hassle with the kids so young. I too remember that “damn i miss Nola” feeling when I lived in Seattle. Any little reminder would set me off. It’s both a blessing and a curse to love this place, it truly is.
I agree. I feel/felt the same way. The year and a few months after K. spent in California, I was desperately homesick. I gave up a relationship of 4 years (not knowing it was already gone and dating another, but no matter) a job, a beat up vw I was rebuilding – because I wanted to be part of rebuilding my home. I took a huge risk, and was it worth it? I can’t say that it has. Where I had been on top of my life, getting things together (school, my business, on top of finances) it all fell apart post-K and never got better. I’m now at the lowest spot in my life and every single day I’m in a turmoil… Do I just keep trying to make it work here? Do I try elsewhere? And if i DO keep trying here – won’t it just be gone again? I look toward every late summer as the “maybe” time. Maybe we will still be here after it – maybe it won’t. It makes long term planning, even from my feeble position – nigh impossible.
And I’m not even a lifer here – only 15 years.. but as so many know, you become a part of this place – and it never leaves you.
I know, I do that too. Every late summer. Will this be the next one? The one to finish us off? Ugh.
Hold out long enough to get took from it before it gets took from you.
Whoa. That was deep man.
I had been considering leaving New Orleans for about a year before Katrina. I’d moved there for a change of pace, change of lifestyle (after having lived in San Francisco prior to NOLA for 21 years). I had visited NOLA many times and loved what I experienced and felt when I visited. It was pretty much a blind leap and huge shift in my life.
I had gotten used to a certain quality of life in SF, however this was also overly tainted by too much “nanny-state” mentality and pushy political correctness. It was thus blissful to be in NOLA even with the random moments of total culture and social shock I experienced.
After Katrina, I decided it was in my best interests to return to San Francisco, having made peace with all the things I once found so irritating about it. I desired and needed better quality of life options, opportunities, more diversity and open-mindedness, progressive-thinking people (not necessarily politically-progressive either, just progressive in general in the way lives are lived and the way change and social progress are embraced and sought out instead of feared and fought against).
I also felt at this point in my life it was not a good idea to “break new ground” in yet another city. I wanted to return to my horde of lovely friends cultivated from the years of living in SF. I missed all the wonderful, West Coast-specific quirks and leanings that made SF life so exhilarating. I was tired of the scarcity and struggle post-K in New Orleans. Things that were merely amusing frustrations prior to Katrina, became repetitive issues and seriously depressing circumstances post-K. I felt my time to be there had passed. It felt time for me to move on. Post-K, I was finally able to accepet that. I have a symbiotic sort of connection with the geography and environment and (for the most part) people of San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest in general, and I wanted to go home.
I adore New Orleans and miss it pretty much every day. If I was 10-15 years younger, I’d probably still be there. But the months post-Katrina, when I tried to make a go of it, actually turned into my last hurrah there, my formal goodby to living there. It was time for me to move on because I needed and wanted different things for my life.
Arriving at that realization was painful and saddening but I don’t regret my decision. I can experience most of the things I loved about living in New Orleans by visiting as frequently as possible, which I do. It will always be my other home. A friend in NOLA put it this way to me and it describes it so very accurately: San Francisco is my comfortable, successful marriage, New Orleans is my passionate, escapist love affair.
It’s so nice to be compared to a back door man.
Eh. Get a sense of humor, toad.
This is kind of what Seattle was like for me. So stable, healthy, and functional. We had a few good friends there too (and a nice little post-K Nola expat community). I even remembered thinking when I left that what I needed to do was stay, but what I wanted to do was go home. I knew I was being impulsive and emotional, but c’est moi.
I’ve heard similar lover analogies for Nola, and I think they are apt. Tennessee Williams started it I think. He even said something like, New Orleans isn’t a place where you write, it’s a place you write about. Bummer, eh? Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if I left again, but I would definitely need to be tethered here somehow by either keeping my home or being close by. Severing this relationship is no longer an option for me.
It’s been more than a year since I left and I have become very comfortable with the fact that New Orleans will always be an everyday part of my life. In fact, I do more there than here. The city has become that much a part of who I am.
You were born and raised there, right? I think I would feel significantly different if I had originated there. I’d probably be hunkering down to try and remain tethered there so I completely understand that perspective. Like I said, I miss it every day. This missing of NOLA happens in so many different ways, some tiny, others great. Ideally I’d love to buy a home and property there so I had the option to visit more regularly or stay there for a length of time. It is not feasible financially right now but someday, who knows? It’ll have to be a long-distance relationship for now.
The more I thought about the ‘lover’ analogy, the more it works for me. I wrote about it below, in response to Loki’s comment…
Being an engineer in New Orleans is hard. I left for better jobs, better schools, and the chance to get into scientific research eventually. But the main reason I personally left is because I’m so young and I have no intention of settling down yet. I love many things about New Orleans, but I love Boston just as much, and a year from now I’ll probably be moving to some other hip city for grad school and will find just as many things to love about my new situation. I’m in a nomadic period of my life right now. That and the fact that I’m not a native might make me a bad example, but I guess it does provide an additional demographic to your survey here. I should say that I’m not a native of Boston either; more accurately, I’m a native of a suburb a good distance outside Boston, and I have zero attachment to that place. So I don’t think my origin really comes into play for me.
The thing I miss most about New Orleans is not the city itself but the friends I made there. While that’s inevitable whenever you leave a place, I do wonder whether I’ll ever have such a great bunch of friends again — that’s an experiment that’s still ongoing. And there’s certain routines that I had really fallen in love with: starting the morning with an iced mocha while sitting outside Rue, Finn McCool’s trivia on Mondays, hashing on Thursdays, biking over for lunch at Stein’s on Sundays. But I’m developing similar routines here in Boston. I do miss the culture and vibe of New Orleans, the joie de vivre as you say. I felt the most intense pangs of nostalgia while I was watching Treme. Despite their complete lack of plot they did capture the feeling beautifully in certain scenes. That’s the only time I would say I really missed New Orleans itself.
But I disagree with liprap’s assessment that there are those who hate New Orleans and there are those who love it. I think most people there are both at once, are bi-polar about NOLA. Sometimes they love its carefree attitude more than anything, other times they wish it would get off its ass and accomplish something, to show everyone why it’s worth fighting for. Maybe that’s what makes it so agonizing to decide whether to stay or leave. All communities are potentially subject to disaster, but it feels much more vulnerable when it seems like the outside world has no reason to care.
I would be perfectly willing to come back to NOLA someday. I promised myself that I’d move around some more, get a feel for some other cultures, earn a PhD, and see where my ambitions take me. Plus, I don’t think NOLA has even one single job I’d be interested in, so yeah… that’s a pretty big hurdle. But luckily it’s easy for programmers to telecommute, so who knows?
Yeah, if I were young and single like you I’d move around and experience as much as I could first too. Though you did have a rare and unique opportunity here, and I’m glad all of you got to do what you did. I am a bit envious of people with no ties to anywhere. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse.
There is programming work here; and if you’re happy in very small companies where you do everything yourself, it’s ok. But there’s not a lot of it.
I left for school in the northeast in the late 90s and returned home when I ran out of money in 2003, and it was a struggle to make things work here then; but I worked at it because I was really out of options.
Clay is the sort of engineer that there is work here for, for now; but should that change, I’m not sure what we’d do. If we were to move to California there is a boatload more work for me, but we don’t know if there is for him, but the state of California’s budget problems make the city of New Orleans look like child’s play. Do I want to raise kids there either, with broke schools? And house prices that make Boston look cheap?
And I’d like my kids to know their grandparents, not just visit them twice a year like all my northerner friends did.
I left before the storm, in 2003, because my father was dying of cancer and my mom needed me to help take care of him. I hated leaving, it broke my heart. I always intended on coming back to New Orleans…even though I’m not from there it has always been the only place that has felt like home to me. Things happened, (met one fiance and had a disastrous engagement and relationship, picked myself back up, then met my husband) and because the man I decided to marry has a job that is firmly rooted here, I realized I would be missing “home” for a lot longer. Trent knows how dearly and desperately I love New Orleans, and how badly I ache for it everyday. If there ever becomes a way that he could work there and not lose pay or benefits, we will move. We may not make it there until he retires, but he has promised me that we’ll get there. Until then, I visit and soak up as much as I can. I walk around and try to capture feelings, sights, and sounds, so I can hold onto them until my next visit and feel less homesick.
[info]poegirl13
2010-07-20 03:04 pm (local) (link) DeleteTrack This
Me again. This post got me thinking about my relationship with the city over the years and why exactly New Orleans has such a huge hold on my heart. I know when I first visited, I had the same romanticized notion of New Orleans that most 21 year old goth kids do. I decided to move there almost as soon as I got out of the car, the beauty of the quarter took my breath away. My goofy idealized view of the city was soon shattered though, and I spent most of my first year there wondering why in hell I, who hated humidity, heat, and bugs, moved to a city with an abundance of all three. My apartment had next to no a/c which didn’t help much, and my first encounter with a flying roach the size of a mouse just about sent me packing. Over the following year I began to realize that though my idea of New Orleans had been way off, the reality of it charmed me even more. The way the sun filtered through the huge oak trees, the completely unique beauty of each house and each neighborhood, the fact that everyone said hello and neighbors really knew each other, the small stores and lack of strip mall blandness…these and many more things made me fiercely love the city. After college I thought I would likely move back to the east or west coast, the climate seemed so much more suited to me. The funny thing is that no matter where I went, Maine, Norway, Seattle, nowhere felt right to me. I actually developed insomnia because my body felt out of sync with something. Finally I decided to move back to New Orleans and go to graduate school there, and as soon as I made that decision I slept soundly again. I feel the pull of New Orleans every day, and if I didn’t love my husband so much I think I would have moved back ages ago. I may have no real right to call it my home, but for me it always will be. I can understand how frightening it must be to wonder if necessity will dictate that you all move away from this amazing place that is your home. I only hope you never have to face that decision and can stay in the place you love.
If you feel right somewhere, then it’s your hometown. And you have every right to declare which one you choose.
Honestly, I’m surprised as many people stay here as it is. If I had no family ties or home that didn’t get flooded I’m not sure I’d put up with this much dysfunctional bullshit for ‘culture’. Even without the hurricanes, dilapidated infrastructure, miserable heat/bugs, and incompetent government, there’s very limited employment opportunity here unless you’re in tourism or cleaning up our latest apocalypse.
I’ve visited or had short stays in several places that I thought might be nice places to live–Austin, Savannah, Chicago, to name a few–and places I knew I would NEVER live–Cleveland, Houston, New York City, Indianapolis. But the bottom line for me is that I’ve never been really pressed to make a decision. I’ve always had family, work and friends in NOLA so there has never been a calling to move anywhere else. Even after Katrina we really didn’t seriously consider moving anywhere else other than as a temporary fix. We knew we’d come back to NOLA and we knew it would be feasible for us. I guess I’m lucky in that way.
Peace,
Tim
I guess that’s the difference though. If you (and your spouse) didn’t have a job or any hope of work here in your field, would you still stay? Would you work at a t-shirt shop or some other tourist industry job just to live here? I don’t think I love it here *that* much.
I lived in Pensacola, Fl and my friends all complained about it. Said they were drinking too much. Said there was nothing to do. Said they had to leave. Said it was killing them.
I moved to San Diego and my friends all complained about it. They said there was no culture. Said it was too conservative. Said they tear down their history. Said it was too expensive. Said it was too materialistic. Said they had to leave.
I moved to New Orleans and my friends all complain about it. Say there is too much crime. Say they are threatened by flooding and hurricanes. Say it’s too hot.
But I’d never been to a civic protest until I lived here. I never met anyone with a symbol of their city tattooed on their body until I lived here. I never saw so many people actively involved in city government (without money to be made) until I lived here.
To be here you have to be active. You have to be part of it. You can’t look at yourself and look at your city and say, “It’s not me, it’s them.” You have to love it to live it. If you are pissed at a pothole, you are halfway there. The next part is deciding what needs to be done to fix it. For some, it’s getting the hell out of there. That fixes it for them.
I have this Teddy Roosevelt quote on my fridge, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
And that is what I will do, until nature or circumstance changes my situation. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have endless backup plans. You’re right in that no place is perfect, you just have to find the one that fits you best (or where you complain the least). But personal preference aside, Nola has some exceptional problems, and those cannot be dismissed with the “grass is greener” defense. A small example…
I remember the first time my husband went to City Hall in Seattle to dispute a parking ticket. Being from Nola, he took the entire day off work and brought a bag of books to read thinking he’d be in there for 9 hours. He walked right up to a rep, explained what happened, and they dismissed it on the spot… with a SMILE. He was out and back to work in 20 minutes. I joked later that this is why “left coasters” believe in big government – because theirs actually functions!
I now live on acres in the country outside a small town in Ohio.
There is a lot to loathe about here: most of my neighbors are cliquish and narrow-minded who feel they have no more growing or learning left to do, townsfolk are wary of strangers for an inordinately long time, most people my age already have pre-teen kids and do nothing after work but go home, downtown is dead but for one pizza place and an awesome wine bar and there is nothing here of significant cultural import unless you like Amish cheese. D and I head to Columbus (and Wisconsin and New Orleans) and our friends there every chance we get because ain’t nothing happening here.
On the other hand, my taxes go directly towards great schools, roads and parks, unpolluted air, safe communities and, above all, community reinvestment. Two things stand out, however: 1) Even people with the shittiest work in town do their jobs punctually, conscientiously and with a smile and 2) Walking outside my home, even at midnight, is not fraught with peril.
Having been through not one but two traumatic, life-changing events, my worry is not whether or when it’s going to be taken away from me, but real calm recovery between these events. Do I want to move back to New Orleans? Everyday. Do I want to deal with the background stress that comes with living there? Not really. So it goes.
I always underestimate “the background stress” you’re talking about. I’m seemingly fine and then I’ll have an anxiety attack and wonder where the hell it came from. I so desperately wanted to have these babies here and raise them HERE. But now that motherhood has tempered my revolutionary spirit a bit, I often wonder if we’d be better off in a less drama-prone place. Sure, the highs can be SO high here. Just look at the Superbowl this year. But the lows, there are just so many LOWS here. Big ones like hurricanes, but little ones like, I have the baby with me today. Should I walk down this street instead? I think someone got punched and robbed on that corner last week.
I guess what it comes down to is, which will wear me down less, ‘the background stress’ or homesickness?
I want so badly for my baby to be born in New Orleans, but not in a New Orleans hospital. I want him or her to get a real education there but not in a NOLA school. I don’t want to have to fight for everything there and fight against everything here. How do I choose between the sharp pains in my chest that came with the anxiety attack on each Invest92 or gunshot and the tearful heartbreak almost each day I’m not there? The mental peace one gets from living there and the mental peace one gets from not living there are two different, irreconcilable creatures in my mind.
Maitri you are in a unique position to answer the question. Has your quality of life improved since you have been away? Not “in some ways yes, in some ways no” but if you had to answer in a committed way, what would it be?
I would say that the quality of my daily, physical life has improved since I’ve been away in that I don’t have to worry about many basic things. (Furthermore, my immediate family lives here, and they’ve been known to bug the living shit out of me but I can’t put a price on having this loving support system.) I’d also say that the quality of my social and emotional life has decreased tremendously and that is a reality I cannot deny, you know, being the social and emotional butterfly that I am. *smile*
Having been in Cincinnati for just over a year now I can say that my quality of life has skyrocketed in some ways and plummeted in others.
We bought a house for literally 10% of what we would have paid in NOLA (40K for a 2 story with yard and two car garage in a neighborhood similar to the Marigny). Something we could never have afforded back home. Things work here. The cops come when called and mostly do their job. City services and utilities are prompt (people here would laugh at that, but compared to NOLA they are super speedy). There is more green space sown through the city than I have ever seen in any urban area, and within a few more years the streetcars will start running downtown.
The severe nerves and shakes I was periodically subject to in NOLA have almost disappeared, but I have also realized just how damaged I actually am. I miss NOLA desperately, every day and with every crappy cup of Yankee coffee I get served. I miss those amazing high points and people who have the will to be weird.
Up here individuality is squelched, there are a lot of liberals but most are a afraid of even really stating their views openly because of the perceived dominance of the far right conservative population. Culturally it is far from home in feel.
Still, when people ask us when we are returning I cannot give a straight answer. I honestly do not know. I stay involved through running HumidCity and working with Rising Tide, but to return completely I would have to set us back years if not decades. It is always with you, and it will aways prey upon your mind. It does not matter where you go.
The stress of day to day life in NOLA has been transubstantiated into the realization of how broken I am in the aftermath of the past five years. The pain and feelings I thought long dealt with are thrown into sharp relief when held up against the yardstick of a population that has not experienced what we did.
I wish I had an answer. I wish I knew for sure that we would be back one day. I wish I did not spend part of every day marveling at the ignorance of the facts possessed by those who only saw it all from a distance via CNN and collected sound bites.
I wish I could give you a better answer.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s especially important for me to get answers from others like myself, who were born here, lived most of their lives here, and then left (not knowing if they’d be able to return or not).
The best explanation I’ve read for this attraction we have to Nola is the “abusive lover” analogy. She is such an exciting lover that takes us to euphoric highs – a beautiful muse, inspiring us to think so differently, making a good time out of anything, and the ‘sex’ is sooooo good. Yet she beats us up, humiliates us in public, spends all our money until we’re broke, keeps us ‘high’ on partying or drama so we can’t get any real work done. If this were a real romantic relationship I’d pity the person addicted to such an abusive person. I’d want them to find a nice stable relationship where the highs and lows were closer to the center. And yet, when I go to sample other cities I find them all so boring. It’s like dating monotone professionals, after dating a witty stripper that can cook. It takes adjusting. And even though I know I’m IN an abusive city relationship, I still don’t know if I’d have the strength to tear myself away. I tried once, and failed. But maybe now that I have children I might have the strength to stick it out… to give them better lives.
I too did not realize how much Nola takes from me on a daily basis. The “background stress” as Maitri called it, was something I completely disregarded. But I know it’s there now, and I have to face it. We shall see.
I tried to read through all the comments, and I will later when I have more time. I’m also interested in reading what others have experienced.
After Katrina, we struggled with the question of leaving or staying and buying a house in New Orleans. For 4 years we debated. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I love New Orleans. It feels like home to me, even more than the town where I grew up, and I suspect it always will. The friends I’ve made there and the sense of community I felt there will always be foremost in my mind when I think about her. In the midst of our moving and the excitement of being in a new city, I have moments of terrible homesickness for New Orleans.
We knew when we moved there in 2002 that it wasn’t a perfect city. What it represented for us was opportunity and an adventure. We moved there on a whim. B didn’t want to stay in San Diego, we were newly married, no kids, portable job, so why not? I never thought we would stay as long as we did, or be as happy as we were.
That being said, Katrina left a deep, dark, scar in our souls that will never quite heal, I think. The evacuation and the realization that everything you owned and everyone you knew and loved could be scattered to the wind was a bitch slap from mortality. It wasn’t just the idea of losing everything, it was that there was so much to lose and so much invested in a way of life. In the end, we left because we knew that we could not deal with the emotional turmoil that goes along with the fact that every year we might have to evacuate. If you’re going to live in a city that gets hit by hurricanes, you need to be prepared to leave. It became evident after Gustav, that neither of us were equipped to deal with that particular yearly threat. Coupled with the mounting frustrations of running a small business, we figured it was time to leave before we started to hate it. All the things we love will still be there when we come to visit, and we’ll actually have time to enjoy them because we won’t be working! It’s a bittersweet trade-off though; it also means that I can’t just call you up to meet me for a drink at 2 in the afternoon.
I think that I will always miss home (New Orleans), and while I don’t think I’ll move back unless something radically changes, I’m not ruling it out.