Of all the interesting questions in this year's Kinder Houston Area Survey, the one that riveted me was this:

If you could, would you stay in the Houston metropolitan area or move away?

Roughly two-thirds of people said they'd stay.

That floored me. I've long considered loving Houston to be my own personal lunacy. Years ago, after finally managing to move to an Important East Coast City, I was shocked to find myself pining for the sprawly mess that I'd left.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to live with the never-ending summers, the mangled sidewalks, the petrochemical releases? Why not settle in a nice dry place where everyone's hair behaves?

For explanations, I turned to Facebook. "Have you ever seriously considered leaving this place?" I asked.

Here, lightly edited, are some of the answers.

Cort McMurray: I think about leaving, every single day. Multiple times per day. I'm never leaving.

The things that repel me are the things that attract me: the blessed anonymity of a place so big, so fast, so changeable that no one knows my history. No one knows if my trajectory has been more North Korean missile than moon shot. You can soak in the tepid water of mediocrity, and no one thinks twice about you.

Houston happens to be a place where I've done the best things I've done in my life: gotten married, raised a family, started a business, learned how to be an adult, sort of, written a little. And no one cares about any of that, either.

Which I love. It reminds you that life is fleeting, and the approbation of the world is meaningless, and you mostly need to just shut up and be nice to the people you love. Plus, the only other places I've lived for any appreciable amount of time are Los Angeles, which is no place at all; Provo, Utah; and Buffalo, New York.

Have you ever eaten banh mi in Provo? Or brisket in Buffalo? It's bleak. And don't get me started about their tacos.

Liana M. Silva: I did consider moving, post-divorce. But now it feels like home. For a long time I tried to ignore the feeling (the New Yorker in me gave me the side eye). But now? I'm good.

Miah Mary Arnold: When I left Houston, I sure missed it. It's easy to take for granted the riches in population we have, but it's the first thing that hurts losing when you leave. I also think this is one of the best vegetarian cities in the country, rodeo and all. In Houston, beans as a side for breakfast is a right.

Nestor Topchy: Houston feels dynamic, like a pie that hasn't cooled — will it fall from the sill?

Mary Carol Edwards: When I walk outside on a gorgeous spring day, smell the air and realize that the weather is right for the chemical plants upwind to have released something nasty, I know I will leave my home town some day. It makes me so angry to be subjected to this.

Angela Blanchard: I love this city and don't need it to be perfect. It's a city, not a theme park. I've devoted most of my adult life to making this city work for everyone no matter where they're from. Because I believe this city runs on human aspiration.

Sheila Sorvari: Does anyone move to Houston for any reason besides work?

I grew old in a city I never loved. After 35 years, I still despise summer in Texas, and the politics just get crazier. Though Austin is a real improvement, it's still a place I don't love. But like so many others, it's where my kids are so I stay. I wish I had left Texas when my kids were still young.

Paul Havlak: I moved to California for a genomics job opportunity, with additional options for such work nearby. But Houston has friends and family I still dearly miss, and an affordable urban culture that's lacking in Santa Cruz.

Louis Vest: I never considered living in Houston until I got a great job here. Over the years I've grown to love it, though.

In the 1960s, we used to drive through Houston and us kids in the back would look around and ask questions, as kids do, and I remember my father, a bomber pilot, telling us to "shut up, we're in Houston!" as though it were some evil place where something bad would happen if he couldn't concentrate on just getting to the other side.

William Dylan Powell: Every time after we visit high-profile places like New York, as the plane is landing, we say to ourselves: "Why do we live here again? Let's go live in one of those trendy places. Later, mosquitoes!"

But by the time we're home unpacking, we remember that a professional writer and a nurse could never live like we do here in places like that. Your money goes so far here.

So by the time we're unpacked, we simply water the citronella plants (in our comfy backyard), order Vietnamese food and never think about moving again. Until the next vacation.

Andrew Edmonson: After the awful defeat of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, I was tempted to move after 25 years in the city. For me and many other LGBT Houstonians, it felt like the city didn't value its LGBT citizens.

Jack Morris Rains: I have worked all over the world and had a place to stay in New York City and Vail, but Houston is the best. Why? Because of the people. We are a special breed who look forward, not backward, who are about building a better life, not waiting for one to be delivered. Houston is the future. We sure is hell are not here for the mountains, cool crisp air, and sparkling streams. Houston is a state of mind.

Deborah Quinn Hensel: I lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for seven years, and it had its charms: all the seafood I could eat, bedroom windows facing the beach, New Orleans just an hour away. But it wasn't home. It was too provincial. They had their own culture that you had to be born into in order to feel really welcome. I had to get back to Houston where there were more wide-open spaces and more opportunities.

Kasia Suchodolska: I consider moving away almost daily: when I can't use the sidewalks even in my supposedly super walkable neighborhood; when I see the sign that you can carry a gun in Target; when it's rodeo season; when it's over 80 outside; when I have to drive anywhere after 5 p.m.; when my toddler counts "dogs without mommies" on our way to her school; and when I have to find a way to explain why there are dead stray dogs rotting on the street. Just writing this list makes me want to pack and leave!

Kenny Browning: For work I've lived all over the U.S. I always looked forward to getting back to Houston. More cool art stuff here, better food, friendlier people. And did I mention art cars?

Jonathon Glus: When one moves to a new city, you find the city's collective narrative. When I moved to L.A. from Chicago, people would tell me that L.A. was sprawling but full of "small treasures and hidden jewels" that make the city accessible, special and beautiful. It was true.

When I moved to Houston — recruited for a job — the narrative I heard was that the people make the city special (i.e., in spite of its physical blemishes). That narrative has changed now: It's all about global diversity. I love Houston and don't plan to leave, precisely because of the people and their diversity.

Steeltoe Rigney: Houston was home for 20 years, four as a Rice undergrad. Rice could be a chilly place for a gay teenager in the 1980s, but the corporate world could be outright hostile. In time I decided to be out on the job, but I was a curiosity. "You're not girly like other gay guys" was said more than once, as though a compliment. Guys who came on to me were usually closeted, and public displays of affection were unthinkable. Seeing no long-term happiness there, I moved to San Francisco. SF is crazy expensive and there's no decent chicken-fried steak, but a gay man in SF is unremarkable. Nowadays LGBT folks have an easier time in Houston, and across the country, but Houston blew its chance with me. I won't go back, but I did leave my heart there.

Holly Furgason: We have left. Last time we came back, we said we weren't leaving again. L.A. was crowded — we couldn't even go to the mountains without sitting in a traffic jam that went to the top. The air is clearer here, the people friendlier, and L.A. wasn't a nice lush green despite its moderate climate. And I'll take a hurricane over an earthquake any day.

Herman Kluge: I had a tempting job offer in Austin in the spring of 2008. To replicate what we have here — a Montrose bungalow in a swell neighborhood — would have made us house-poor in Austin. Even though we'd enjoy the amenities of Oz and have many friends there, our roots here, the musical opportunities, and our connection to the sense of place here was too strong to leave. We love this place — warts and all.

George Weisinger: I'll always be back. For me it's genetic: I have webbed hands and feet. I belong here.

Brian Tagtmeier: I've had chances through work to move to Austin, San Antonio, Dallas.... And I only said, "Open a Houston office."

I'm from Dallas. But Houston is home.

Dwight Silverman: As we get closer to an age where we might retire, we are considering other places, including Albuquerque and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. But Houston is also in the mix.

We love it here for the diversity, the food, the arts, the availability of anything you'd want to buy, and the food. Did I mention the food?

But the reasons we'd want to leave? The climate, hurricanes, Texas' ridiculous politics, and that it's getting more and more costly to live where we want to live (inside the Loop). We've got about four years before we would make a move — we'll see how it's going then.

Holly Beretto: As a Houston transplant, I vacillate all the time on this question. I don't love Houston. I'm not sure I ever will. But I do, for the most part, love my Houston life. I didn't choose Houston; it basically chose me. And it is really, really good that it did.

Bruce Bodson: I came out here from the west and hated it immediately, but the job was good. I lived here for eight years before I would buy a house because I didn't want to be slowed down by real estate when the chance to leave came.

I couldn't stand the lack of public land and the difficulty in getting out for long hikes and backpacking trips. Eventually I discovered public waters and have come to love the bayous, swamps and bays.

Babette Hale: I've been trying to leave all my life, but as a native and daughter of a native, I never quite managed. There are things I have loved about Houston--the trees thronged with birds; our inner-city house was like living in an aviary. The cultural institutions: Bayou Bend, the MFA, the Symphony, the Menil. Theater. Our wonderful parks.

The unbridled pro-developer mindset has ruined it for me. In the '90s my neighborhood, once tranquil and safe, became a zone for tear down/build up mega-mansions. Noise on all sides. Trucks clogging the narrow streets. Once we had four new houses going up within half a block, each at a different stage of turbulent completion, built out to or past the setback lines, crowding their neighbors in a most un-neighborly way. It is messy and ugly and unpleasant.

But growth has allowed a vibrant multicultural city to occur. That is a big plus. Restaurants are better; bookstores thrive. So we stay. But I would never have lasted without a refuge in the nearby countryside to run to. The sadness of change, the pressure of relentless materialism, weigh on the spirit.

Joe Householder: It's like being multi-lingual. I might speak Washington, D.C., but I'll probably always dream in Houston.

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