I don't say it much, but I am always thinking about you and everyone else in and from New Orleans. *hugs* I feel helpless to do anything "practical," but my thoughts and prayers are always with you, and my heart goes out to you.

I can't know exactly what you've been through, but I understand something about trauma and grief and the long, dark, inescapable shadows they cast. I know how being separated from a life you loved can be like swords through the heart, and feel like endless exile. It's generally true that "time heals," but sometimes it seems like there's not enough time in the universe.

But sooner or later, things do change, for the better... new people, things, and opportunities come into your life... you find the peace, love, and support you need to bloom where you are planted... or maybe a tug on your soul to do something or go somewhere you never would have dreamt of before. I've felt a little of both! Always in very unexpected ways.

I hope you will find greater peace and fulfillment soon, and greater community and love.

Hehe, I'll let you in on a secret: my new path is just as strange to me as to anyone else... my life is nothing like I ever thought it would be. I've faced down considerable doubts and hesitations about how to proceed. But there's always been that strong, strange tug on my soul that I mentioned. Following it has been wonderful--in a literal sense: full of wonder.

I don't want you or any of my other friends to think that there's no place for you in my "new life." That couldn't be farther from the truth. If there's one thing I've learned, it is to love more fully and deeply every day, and to appreciate how precious every person in my life is, near or far, old or new, similar or dissimilar.

I love you dearly!

You know, Patrick was a very strong, very compassionate man who loved living on the coast... I'm sure he feels very strongly for the people who have been suffering from Katrina. I bet he's been lending you all a hand from Heaven. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were to know him in some way. :)

Having not lived in NOLA for almost 12 years now, I still think about her everyday in some way. My tattoo reminds me of my time there and I sill go every Halloween to help throw a big ass vampire party to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. It's one of those places that lives in you and theat takes us residence and never leaves. It does have a soul, an old soul and it loves those who love her. It truly is unlike any other city in the world in the way it feels. I live in Chicago now but still have plans to retire there if I can. Some old house with a history and a porch. Let things slow down as they are wan to do there anyway.
As a cancer survivor and a brain tumor survivor I know a little something about waiting for the other shoe to drop. My doctor called it "pre-anticipatory anxiety, due to post tramatic stress disorder". After so many horrendous things happening to me, even after it was over and I was in the clear, I was nervous and jumpy...even when the phone rang, just because I was waiting around for bad news. I put my life on hold because I didn't see the point when I *knew* something else was going to come down on me. I've been in remission for 4 years now and the feeling is lifting. Time has a way with things. I hope you find what you need and that you follow your heart wherever you are. You'll find it when you least expect it. This too shall pass.

girl, i've been gone for a year and I half! and not a day passes that I don't feel this same way. I hope one day it does get easier..for us all

True.

I never gets easy to be away, and it makes my heart hurt every time I hear more bad news... of any kind. I miss home all the time.

We need to get together and have some good New Orleans food. I'll cook.

I'm moving to your neck of the woods in a few weeks. I'll be in AMLI at Stonehollow near Burnet and Duval. Call me.

*hug* I wish there was something I could do, or say, but I know there isn't. So instead, I will just send love and a fuckton of Jameson's. ;) ;)



that was a lot of fun, you know. Maybe I should try to make it down to Texas at some point and we can drown in a bottle, or 5. ;)

*smooch*

i know this too well...we left for 5 months right after the storm...i swore that first month we would never move back...it hurt to bad to lose everything and go back there...then after a month or so after that decision, the ache to "come back home" grew stronger and stronger and we came back Jan 2006...it felt great to be back "home"...we bought a house and renovated it from gutted studs...it felt so good to be a part of the "rebuilding"...then, one thing after another of us getting kicked down and the city itself getting kicked down from the inside and the outside...that ache to "come back home" is back...but we're here already...that ache will be here whether we're here or not here...home isn't home anymore...yes, we would miss our friends if we were to decide to move away again, but on the other side of that coin, we miss our many friends who left as a result of the storm that aren't coming back - yourself included...it's a seriously wounded Catch-22...

You said it better than I could.

*hug*

Been gone since the Hurricane, and I am homesick every day. You're right: it never goes away.

I am sending a girl named Meredith to find you in Austin. She and her man are moving there and she doesn't know anyone. I told her to stop in at Opal's and ask for you, since you know everyone in the bar/restaurant industry down there and might possibly have some hook-ups for employment or at least where to start looking. She's a nice girl and I think you'd like her, and I told her I adore YOU and that you totally saved my ass in NOLA.

Speaking of...NOLA's a big town. Are you deliberately not moving back for a reason? I'm not moving back because of the high rents and lack of poor person medical care. If I had a good job and insurance, though...

xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoox

Seconded, after four years, four months gone.

Well said. Everyone who knew and loved New Orleans before Katrina is missing it still, whether we are physically in New Orleans or somewhere else.

Well said, Becca. New Orleans, while still home, is not the home I had before the storm.

Last night, I experienced a "why are you still here?" rant. It was horrible. Offensive. An ignorant rant by a drunk someone who perhaps never fell in love with the city. I don't know. I'm still here due to multiple reasons. I don't judge people who leave. Everyone has their own reasons for either staying or leaving. You do what you have to do. The end.

It all sucks, this business of missing home whether you are home or not.

well said. I left before Katrina - for a number of reasons. I needed to get some things figured out and couldn't do it at that point in my life there. New York has been amazing - most importantly I found Aaron. Now that I have him and I've figured the shit out, all I want to do is move back. We talk about it all the time, but I know I'm not strong enough to live in the city it is now. I find it so strange that I spent most of 26 years in Seattle and three in New Orleans - but that NOLA is my home.

I'm sorry you all feel bad, but to be honest, it makes me feel a tiny bit better to know that the people who left still miss this place. I understand why someone would want or need to leave. However, I don't understand why some of these people need to make themselves feel better about their decision by writing the equivalent of "See, I told you New Orleans sucks" every time something bad happens here. The people who stay are well aware of the problems and hazards of living here. We don't need our noses rubbed in it.

Ayup. It's home, but hasn't been where I live for quite a few years. Seattle is good in many ways, most of which are the ways that NOLA isn't - growing up in NOLA warped my sense of what is safe and not so badly, heh. It's weird to know that the worst "bad parts" here are pretty much equivalent to the relatively-safe area where I spent my childhood.
It's still not NOLA, but I also still try to give as many people a way out as possible. I care about the city more than I ever believed that I could, but I care about my friends more, and the city is killing them now one by one.

I know sweetie - I feel it too. I've been in Seattle for one year as of next week and I think of New Orleans very very often.

Here's the thing. It's not "The New Orleans we fell in love with" anymore. I loved my friends that lived there, now 90% of them live elsewhere. I've been back several times and it was worse for me to be back and see the city limping along then it was for me to live in a new town.

Now I just admit that I love living in a city where it's 65' in July and the murder rate is 2 or 3 people a year. Then I make the promise to myself that, yes, I will go out dancing even though I'll expect to see all my old acquaintances on the dance floor, but not recognize anyone at all. It's lonely and it hurts and it feels like my best friend died, but I'm slowly getting used to it, even if no one gets naked and practically everything I used to take for granted is against the law.

lol - so very true, truthfully my best friend here is a guy that I used to club with fifteen+ years ago from college, not an actual Seattle native.

I think it just takes time though, when I first moved to NOLA I used to say all the time: "This place would be so much better if all my Michigan friends lived here!" 12 years later I live in Seattle and I find myself saying, "This place would be so much better if all my New Orleans friends were here".

Needless to say I met many many wonderful people living in NOLA but it took a few years for me to feel comfortable.

After living in Seattle for a year I can relate to that feeling. I called it "survivor's guilt". The feeling of knowing that you left everyone behind and are helpless or useless to fix anything. Running away did not make me feel better, but coming back did not make me feel much better either. As I said in one of my posts, I feel like I'm living in "zombie nola" - a peeling rotting version of nola with a gutted soul. There is no right answer. Right now I'm hovering in feeling "okay". I suppose if I cross the "miserable" line we'll consider leaving again, but so far the city is treating us pretty well. I can't say the same for many of my friends though, and I fully understand why many of them are leaving. I have learned not to judge in this situation anymore, since I have experienced the entire spectrum of emotions on this issue.

These posts make me finally understand the magnitude and the depth of the trauma that tore apart NOLA and the people who love her. Thank God for the internet, that all of you can maintain some sense of community even though many are physically separated. I hate to hear of such a vibrant place now being regarded by so many as a husk, partly because some availed themselves of the better part of valor, and decided to move to a place that was not so subject to the whims of nature; partly because of the promised help that never came, and partly because some of NOLA's seamier denizens chose to take whatever advantage of the situation they could. Hard to come back from such a triple whammy. Both the physicality and the flavor of the city have been altered, perhaps irrevocably. It's difficult to think that a single event could change things so much; after all, NOLA has seen her share of storms before; but this one was a mutha. I'm sorry, and I feel for you all, for whatever that's worth. I wish you everything you need physically, emotionally, and spiritually in whatever lies ahead.