I feel the OP’s “pain”. and it is painful to leave something you have loved all your life.
I lived and loved New Orleans most of my adult life, I left 10 years ago. And ten years ago it was not quite the cesspool it is now.
A couple of years ago I had to go to New Orleans for an appointment. I paid for a couple of hours of parking so I ventured out to canal street. It was the usual hot and crowded, but so many of the places I knew and loved had long gone. In the past I was never afraid in town (down town) but I only walked around the block and could not get back to my vehicle fast enough, This was in the middle of the day during the week. And going to the quarter, well forget about it. I still love New Orleans but there is little chance I’ll ever go back. I’ve been living 300 miles away in the piney woods of north Louisiana, its my little piece of heaven on earth. Goe is goo, all the time.
“I feel the OP’s “pain”. and it is painful to leave something you have loved all your life.”
Even for a couple of years, it can be painful.
Sometimes things change, which you have zero control on what comes next.
In 1966 we bought a great townhouse in western Fairfax county/DC area shortly after our first son was born. We had great neighbors and my wife made great friends new mothers of her age. Our second child was born in early March, 1968. We loved our relatively new home, and my parents had moved to Fairfax county to live near the grandkids and a good teaching job for my Mother. They were history buffs and loved to walk and tour the sights in DC.
Then, on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TN., MLK was killed and the world for many of us changed.
We had serious riots in the DC area and basically every suburban neighborhood changed for the bad. Our areas didn’t have a regular night police staff before the riots, as there was no crime.
About a month later, the tires on my company car were stolen one night. The car was in an approved lighted parking place 60 feet from our home. Several other cars had their tires stolen.
The sheriff didn’t want to send a deputy to photo and fingerprint the cars without tires. He finally did. The thieves were never caught.
My boss was a NE Ivy league rectum, and said I lived in a poor neighborhood. 3 months later his Montgomery county home was robbed and partied in while he and his family were in the NE at a family vacation.
I changed companies and got an opportunity to move to Marin County, California to a new home. At first my wife didn’t want to move. I told her all of our neighbors and friends were planning to move that summer if they found jobs and homes away from the DC area. They all of them did, and my parents moved back to their home state.
One couple worked for the state department and went to Hong Kong for 3 years. Then, they moved back to their Virginia townhouse. As noted all of their friends had moved. They had rented their house and took another foreign assignment, asap. They had just returned to the DC area after that assignment and their home where we were neighbors.
I visited them for a couple of nights combined with a business meeting at Dulles. They could not believe how bad the area had become. Anybody who could afford to move, had or was moving. They kept loaded guns in that home 24/7. Drugs and kids including their teens were a problem all over.
They took another foreign assignment and somehow sold their home in Centreville. They never came back after that.