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.

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.

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.

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.