You left New Jersey. You still listen to us every day. That tells us everything.

This one is for the people who stayed.

Not the ones who left for the Carolinas and spent the next three years posting about their property tax bill. Not the ones in Tennessee who seem to need everyone back home to agree that New Jersey is terrible so they can feel better about their decision. This piece is for the people who are still here — still paying the bills, still sitting in the same traffic, still eating the best food in the country — and who have never once felt the need to apologize for it.

You know who you are. And this is your tribute.

The ones who left keep calling in

Here is something that happens on our show that I find genuinely beautiful.

People call in from Florida. From the Carolinas. From Tennessee, which has apparently become the new destination of choice for former New Jerseyans who want a big house and a low tax bill. They moved. They built new lives. And they still tune in to a New Jersey radio station every single day from wherever they are.

Think about that. They left the state. They did not leave us.

We ask them what they miss. And here is where it gets interesting. The answer is almost never family first. It is almost never the old neighborhood, the changing leaves, the way the pines smell in September. The answer — almost every time, sometimes before they even take a breath — is the food.

You cannot get a good pizza down here. There is no real Italian food. Nobody knows what pork roll is. I have been to six bagel places and I want to cry. The cheesesteaks are not right. The subs/hoagies are not right. Nothing is right.

They laugh when they say it. But they mean every word.

And I think that says something profound about this state that no property tax comparison ever could. New Jersey food is not just food. It is identity. It got into these people so deeply that they moved a thousand miles away and they still feel its absence every single day. You can leave New Jersey. You cannot get New Jersey out of you.

SEE ALSO: NJ is the best state for the American Dream — so why can’t we afford it 

Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images

Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images

The ones who stayed never needed to be convinced

The people still here did not make a mistake. They made a choice. And most of them made it with full knowledge of everything this state costs — the taxes, the tolls, the car insurance that makes no rational sense, the cost of just existing here at a level other states cannot comprehend.

They stayed for the roots. The family two towns over. The friends they have known since third grade who still meet for dinner at the same diner. The Shore in August — not a generic beach, their beach, the one their parents took them to and their kids now run toward. They stayed because New Jersey is not just where they live. It is who they are.

There is a quiet pride to the people who stayed that the people who left sometimes mistake for stubbornness. It is not stubbornness. It is loyalty. And there is a difference.

The dumping from a distance gets old

I will say this once and then I will move on because it does not deserve more than once.

If you moved to Tennessee and you love it there — genuinely, I am happy for you. Lower taxes and a bigger house are real things and nobody should be judged for wanting them. But if you spend half your time on social media telling the people back home how much better your life is now, how much smarter you were to leave, how anyone still in New Jersey is a fool — I want to ask you something honestly.

If it is so great there, why are you still tuned in to a New Jersey radio station?

The obsession with putting New Jersey down from a safe distance says less about New Jersey than it does about what you actually miss. The people still here do not need your validation or your pity. They are fine. They are at the Shore. They are eating real pizza. They are exactly where they want to be.

Cape May sunset | photo by EJ

Cape May sunset | photo by EJ

This is for the ones who never left

New Jersey is not perfect. Nobody who loves this state pretends it is. The taxes are too high and have been too high for too long and that conversation is not going away. But the people who stayed are not here because they could not do the math. They are here because there are things New Jersey does that nowhere else on earth comes close to doing.

The food alone is worth a paragraph but you already know that. The density of everything worth experiencing within an hour of everywhere. The way you can be in the Pine Barrens at sunrise and on the boardwalk by noon. The way North Jersey and South Jersey argue about everything and agree on nothing except that we are both right. The way people here tell you the truth whether you asked for it or not. The way a diner at midnight feels like home in a way that no chain restaurant in any other state ever will.

The people who stayed know all of this. They live it every day.

To the listeners calling in from Florida, from the Carolinas, from Tennessee…and beyond — we are grateful you still tune in. We know what that means. Come visit whenever you want. The pizza will be here.

And to the people who never left — you never needed to say a word. You just kept showing up. That was always enough.

LOOK: Here’s where people in every state are moving to most

Stacker analyzed the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey data to determine the three most popular destinations for people moving out of each state.

Gallery Credit: Amanda Silvestri