Disclaimer: this is my own personal point of view based on my experiences being raised here, and opinions formed from my own powers of deduction and observation. Born in Baton Rouge, my family moved me to NOLA in 1992 when I was 15. I lived in New Orleans until I left for grad school in NY at 25 back in 2001, and then returned to BR in 2016, the year I turned 40, and hadn’t lived in BR since I was 15. These are in no particular order.

The economy is not diverse.

This was the reason initially my husband (then-boyfriend) left back in 2001. We were living in NOLA and everything was tourism and service industry. My understanding is that has not gotten better, but instead NOLA has double down restaurants and hospitality services. We felt then that if we wanted to pursue “other things” we needed to leave. We were right.

Tech industry is also next to nonexistent. Husband sought a job as a mechanical drafter, using Revit instead of AutoCAD; almost no one uses that here, and when they do, they want to pay someone $30-40K to do it. I work in tech as a project manager. Opportunities with software companies exist, but they are all with very small companies, with shall we say, an unenlightened work life balance.

Since moving back to BR in 2016, I realize that the other industry in South Louisiana is the petrochemical industry. I knew that before but it wasn’t as present when we lived in NOLA. Everyone still believes that the best jobs are with “the plants” and that everyone’s goal should be to become a plant operator. While I understand that many people in south Louisiana depend on The Plants for their livelihood, this is severely limiting for anyone who wants to do literally anything else. Having trouble finding a job in your industry? Just get a job with The Plants like everyone else. Don’t you want to make big money?

The people here have given up too much of themselves to the petrochemical industry, and though it continues to fool them into thinking that Louisiana has all these great high-paying jobs, the reality is, our communities are being raped. They are stripping away our sportsman’s paradise with pollution, and not building back in return. These plants may make a shit-ton of money, but they pay very little or nothing in taxes, which means our communities don’t get funded the way that they should given the wealth we’re generating for these companies. This video explains how, compared with cities in Texas that also have comparable refineries, Louisiana has one of the most profitable refineries, yet gets a pittance in return, while the same Texas town demands and gets much more.

Car insurance is too damn high (and the roads are third-world).

Coming from NY, where car insurance is more reasonably priced and there are laws about insurance, Louisiana has got a serious problem when it comes to insurance. We went from paying around $650/6 months on two cars to $513 a MONTH for 2 cars. It is not completely apples to apples, since one car we had in NY did not carry comprehensive, but this is a staggering cost discrepancy that no one talks about. Also I had to pay $900 sales tax to register my vehicle in LA, even though said vehicle was already paid for in another state. And while I’m on the subject of cars, the roads are intolerable and cause all kinds of damage to your car that you end up footing the bill for–windshield cracks, nails in tires, cracked foglamps, scuffs, scrapes. Take a drive down any interstate here, especially the I-10 and I-110 and you will be transported back to the 1960s. Next time you’re stuck in traffic, notice how many cars you see with dings, dents, cracked bumpers, cracked windshields. There’s the overt financial burden and then there’s the invisible burden of having to pay for damages to your vehicle caused by potholes, road debris, and dumbassery.

And then there’s the personal injury lawyers: Morris Bart, Gordon McKernan, Dudley DeBosier, Spencer Callahan, etc. Just hearing their names brings up their commercial jingles in my brain. Everyone is sue happy here and looking to make a quick buck. God forbid you get into an accident!

Dying Public School System.

Louisiana ranks 49th for education nationwide. 49th. Or 48th depending on which list you look at. Literally moving to any other state other than Arizona, Alaska, and New Mexico improves your child’s chances of getting a good education; even Mississippi is not as bad as we are when it comes to education.

I was raised on public schools here, going to some of the best high schools in the area. Imagine my surprise to find that most public school educators start at 40K/year, and don’t progress much beyond that. While some of the high schools do pay more for teachers with master’s degrees, overall the average pay in Louisiana is very low compared to other states. When you don’t pay people a living wage, they will burn out and the quality of the education suffers. In general, there seems to be a right-wing backlash against public schools nationwide, so it’s not just a Louisiana problem, but most affluent people send their kids to private schools that are literally next door to public counterparts. School voucher programs will ruin public schools. Without the support of the people living in these communities, public schools will eventually fail. There are a handful of holdouts that do well and continue to receive the funding based on test scores, etc, but those are few and far between.

Good old fashioned Racism.

People here will always say they are not racist, but let me tell you, they are in fact racists. There is a lot of double talking that goes on here. Things are said in private that would not be repeated in a public scenario, about restaurants being “too dark” or parts of town “getting darker.” I am always taken aback when I hear white people around me speak in this way. Why does this happen? Well my guess is that people who grew up here and never left inherited certain opinions from their parents and their grandparents, and it comes down to this: blacks and whites don’t mix. While I cannot say for sure, but it feels like black familes inherited a similar unspoken rule from their predecessors. There is some kind of unspoken fear of mixing with the other race, on both sides. When someone thinks a school is ‘bad’ or a part of town is ‘bad’ it is usually schools or parts of town where blacks are predominant. Where the crime happens most, is usually a poor black part of town. When white people talk of crime spreading, or schools becoming bad, it is coded language. There are affluent black people in this area, and they want nice things for themselves and their kids too; but when a black family moves into a neighborhood, white people feel the need to comment on it, if not leave outright. I had a friend growing up whose parents were lawyers, and they lived in a very nice neighborhood; I recall distinctly my mom pejoratively calling it a ‘black neighborhood’ which confused me as a kid, because I didn’t see how it was limited in any way only to black residents. But what she meant but did not explicitly say was that white public opinion felt there were too many blacks there, and so had written it off as a possible space for whites to move into. We definitely have black families in my current neighborhood, much to the chagrin of the older white neighbors, but everyone mostly keeps to themselves. It’s very isolating if you ask me.

Everything floods. And there’s not enough roads.

I grew up in Baton Rouge in the 80s and 90s, and Baton Rouge was considered high ground. Sure it rained, but I don’t remember being afraid during rainstorms unless they were accompanied by hurricanes. Since the flood of 2016, everyone is on edge when we get too much sustained, torrential rain. When it rains hard (as it has now at least twice already in this young year), the water creeps up my back patio and up to my back door, and the back yard itself becomes a swamp ecosystem, frogs and all, and the soil takes days to dry out completely. They keep building more subdivisions in this area and yet the roads, the drainage, the ditches, stay the same. You cannot increase an area’s population density and not expect drainage issues! And the roads…Jefferson Highway is still a two-lane country road, and it’s the main road I have to turn onto when I leave my subdivision, and certain times of the day, it is IMPOSSIBLE to take a left turn. There are only a couple of roads to take to get out here, and everyone must take one of them, and there are ditches on either side, and commercial businesses, and tons of densely populated subdivisions. I don’t know where all these people came from, but they’re here now, and these roads are TIRED, and there are no plans that I’m aware of to widen Jefferson Highway, or to create new access roads between Airline and Jefferson, so we all just put up with it. And yet people keep buying these houses up and they just keep building them. And don’t even get me started on the I-10 and I-110. Those roads are in dire need of change, but the most recent proposal to upgrade the I-10 corridor just got postponed.

The BRLA (Brrr-La) version of the American Dream is a Throwback to the 1950s

What does every female born and raised here in BRLA seem to want out of life? To meet a man in college who will give them a fairy tale wedding, buy them a house, impregnate them four times, and “take care” of them financially. At least until they divorce and the woman gets the house.

I have NEVER aspired to these things, but it was an expectation I felt from my mother, and I see it playing out for others here. The typical BR woman is attractive, takes care of herself, gets her nails done, has a little plastic surgery (Weiler’s ‘the new refreshed me’ commercial comes to mind), likes tailgaiting at LSU games, that is until she has a baby. Then she becomes super mom who is all about her kids, and aspires to live in a cookie cutter modern farmouse or fake plantation home. Ideally the husband would make enough money (over $150k) so she doesn’t have to work full-time and can focus on the kids. Oh and somehow afford giant trucks for everyone to drive. Or, if she MUST work, she is a nurse or some kind of medical professional, working part-time if she can, because health care is second only to the Plants for acceptable job opportunities here.

What do the men want? Well if anyone cares, they want to have LSU season tickets, tailgate with guy friends well past when it’s cool to do so, and go hunting to escape the women and children.

I know this is a bit exaggerated, but I feel like this is the overarching sterotype of what people’s aspirations are here. And of course there are many, many exceptions to this rule. For a woman to expect not to work, have a packet of kids, and drive expensive vehicles, the husband better be a doctor or lawyer to afford that lifestyle.

Too Much Cliquish Conformity

People don’t like to explore outside of their comfort zones, don’t like to test the waters or tolerate anything outside of what is deemed ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ ethnically, religiously, or personally, so it is no surprise that conservatism abounds here. I realize that churchiness is a feature of the South, not just this area, but literally there are churches every few miles here, but none as big and conspicuous as Healing Place and Bethany. Perhaps living downstream from Healing Place colors my view, but those evangelical churches definitely are cultish. I knew of some people who professed to go there only to meet ‘who’s who’ in BRLA, and not really to be religious. I mean, Healing Place even has a Starbucks inside!

In my youth, I was forced to attend Christian Life Academy on Sundays for two hours, and boy was that a misery. That was my first exposure to raising of hands and speaking in tongues–and I solemly vowed then that once I got out, I was never going back. Now I cynically see all churches as a siphon for money, period. I know some can do good works, but I have to question it when the churches and the crosses become larger than life (and visible from the I-10).

Even if they don’t attend a cultish evangelical church, most BRLAnians attend church, and they LOVE to talk about it. And if you don’t also profess to attend a church, they definitely judge you. This is high school all over again. Grown ass people exist who do not choose any of these religions, but opting out of religion or choosing a different one entirely is not a choice for most people raised here. Everyone is so afraid of doing something out of step with what is Expected, with what they were taught, that instead conformity is a way of life here, and it is a shock to their system when anyone questions or outright rejects any of the tenets of BRLA conformity.

TL;DR

I have felt like an outsider my whole life here, less so in New Orleans of course, which is more cosmopolitan, but no sensible person can live in NOLA and not go slightly insane. To have your property threatened by flood year after year, and to keep replacing it–well that’s the definition of insanity. And for me, to keep living in a place that I don’t agree with ideologically, spiritually, politically, and where I don’t fit in interpersonally, well, I’m tired of trying. I’m going back to the Northeast, where I lived for 15 years, where I had an entire life, career, and set of like-minded friends and family, away from BRLA family pressure and judgement and not-belonging, away from the corruption and lies and never-changing economy and landscape. There is nothing new under the sun in Louisiana and, though there’s always a promise of a better tomorrow, that tomorrow keeps getting pushed back. At some point you get older and you realize you don’t have time to wait for things to change anymore. Best of luck to the people who stay and fight the good fight, but as of this summer, count me out.

Today I started a new job. This job is completely, 100% remote. There is no home office, and best of all, no one else is located here in Louisiana. (Well except for one other employee, but that’s irrelevant.) This is the first step towards leaving Louisiana, again, this time for good!

I no longer have to fight stupid, demoralizing BR traffic twice a day, saving me nearly two hours of commute time and untold stress every time I realize that it just took me 45 minutes to drive 15 miles. No more!

From here on out I can just pretend I don’t live here, since I won’t need to travel the horrible I-10 and 110 back in time to the BR of the 1970s, marveling at the abandoned vehicles and trash on either side of the interstate, gazing in awe at the overpasses that somehow stay aloft despite the gaping holes in them made by cars.

None of the people I work with have been to Louisiana, nor do they seem too interested in it, so I’m not bombarded with comments about how “unique” New Orleans is by people who went to Bourbon street once. I work with people from Elsewhere again, and these, I tell you, are my true people. Educated, well-spoken, smart people. Not fancy, not snobby, just smart.

We still have some time to do here before we can afford to leave, but this is a bright spot all the same.

I’m a mom and I work full-time. I’m also a Girl Scout leader and I’m on the board of my HOA. You’re thinking, what a nice, giving person I must be, to do that volunteer stuff that no one else wants to do. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, I wanted to be part of the solution, to be the change I want to see, blah blah blah. Let me just say that I now admire the gall of quitters, or better, of people who never say yes to shit they don’t want to do in the first place. Once you say yes, you’re stuck, until moving away or death saves you from having to do the thing you said yes to.

I daydream about quitting Girl Scouts and the HOA almost daily. I even started looking into other schools my daughter could attend just so I could get out of being a leader. I never wanted to be a leader; what I wanted was for my daughter to be the Girl Scout I never was. There wasn’t a troop, so voila! I became the leader.  And I completely LOATHE being on my HOA. The HOA was the straw that broke me, you could say, because even though it only demands action from me March-September, it is the volunteer thing I hate the most vehemently, because it’s so stupid, useless, and unappreciated (we still get hate mail from people who have nothing better to do than complain). Also I’m the youngest member on the board and I have this fear that the old ones will die and leave me the sole living member with access to the bank account.

Know your limits, they say. Learn to say no, they say. Well the thing is, how do you know your limits until you test them? You have to say yes a few times and live the pain of that before you can become wise enough to say no in the future.  Well I have definitely tested my limits and have found long-term commitment volunteering is NOT for me. I would much rather volunteer sporadically to help someone else out, instead of volunteering for a long-standing commitment, as I have apparently done.

I could just quit, walk away, leave the people behind to pick up the pieces…and that is my fantasy. Just quitting, turning in my keys, so to speak, letting someone else pick up the pieces. So why don’t I? Because I’ve never been a quitter, I persevere. But as no one wants to willingly pick up the mantle while I’m still here, able-bodied and alive,  it’s getting to a point where I may need to just work up the courage to quit and let whatever happens, happen.

How did I get into this fix? At the time I started both of these volunteer positions, the job I had wasn’t challenging, and quite simply, I was bored. I have since changed employers and now do not have time during the day to devote to planning anything other than work. The question is, how to escape my commitments, made three years ago under very different circumstances?

I could go ‘Juliette’ with my daughter and Girl Scouts. Quit being a leader, and continue to attend GS events, just my daughter and me. Without having to cater to 11 other girls and their fickle parents, without having to plan and remind everyone three different ways prior to every event or outing. Or maybe someone would step up and continue the troop if I really stepped down, and I could continue to be Troop Cookie Mom. Yeah right. If it’s a reality I could theoretically cope with, like just being the TCM, it definitely won’t happen.

I could also quit the HOA (or I could move). When no one else stepped up to take our places for the second year in a row, I put my foot down with the president (a 73-year old lady), stating that I would continue only if all I did was the work of a treasurer, e.g., collecting payments, paying bills, keeping track of spending, doing a report twice a year. Period. Because I have “computer skills,” it fell to me to order signs and address labels, write and publish the newsletter, create a Facebook page, etc. I let the old lady do the last newsletter on her own and she botched it all up. Sigh.

Part of my problem is that I like to feel like I’m being helpful, but I now realize there’s a fine line between being helpful and being taken advantage of. If I’m going to go above and beyond on something, it’s going to be at my job, not on some volunteer board.

I have pledged to give myself one more year in both volunteer outlets, and if I still feel this way in May, I’m stepping down as leader. And I’m definitely quitting the HOA after next year because that will have been 3 years and someone else on the board can be treasurer!

Please give me the ability to say NO and the strength to withstand the results of my saying no.