Voids

Sorry for my disappearance.  I'm back in Mexico and, as usual, that takes some adjustment for me.  I can no longer hide out in my backwoods mountain cabin and avoid the drunken crowds.  They surround me.  Everywhere.  I have probably come the closest to drinking again in the last three weeks than I ever have in my sobriety.  And once again, it would have been to punish someone or to get them to change their ways, not because "I" wanted a drink.

Which is just fucked up thinking and the last time I drank to try to change someone else I almost killed myself and it still didn't work

But things are different now than they were almost 2.5 years ago when I did that.  Back then I wasn't strong enough to escape, at least I didn't think I was.  But now I am and I know it and while I may have felt so unhappy in the last few weeks to think about drinking again, I knew I wouldn't.  I knew I was stronger than that.

That being said, I was miserable and I don't function well when I'm miserable, in fact, I don't function at all which explains the void in this blog.  It gets very tiring doing this on my own and since you guys know I'm always looking for signs, I'll tell you about one that keeps hitting me over my head.
As my friend, cp, says, "Ding Dong."

Sign 1:  I picked up one of my fellow elves to go do some Christmas shopping for the ninos a couple of weeks ago.  She hadn't been in the car five minutes when she said, "Hey, Christine ________ told me to tell you to contact her.  She says if you want to go to an AA meeting or need someone to talk to to call her.

See what happens when you tell the whole world you're an alcoholic?  I had no idea that Christine was an AA'er.  In fact, I thought she was a drinker because I see her at all the same functions I go to, which involve drinking.

Sign 2:  I was at another fundraiser, because when you hold fundraisers for your own cause you are then obligated to go to every fundraiser under the sun, whether it be for the street dogs, computers for the school, or knitting ponchos for cats.  A man I know and I started talking, he has been sober for six years and I already knew this.  He said, "You and I should go to an AA meeting in Merida, it would be a hoot!"

An AA meeting a "hoot"?

Signs 3:  The cap'n and I were driving back from our little project house in Dzilam de Bravo one day and there were signs everywhere.  No, I didn't see the AA triangle in amorphous cloud formations, or spelled out in fallen, decaying palm fronds, instead I saw it painted in peeling paint on the sides of crumbling buildings in almost village we passed through.

I have driven through these villages dozen of times and never noticed an AA sign.

On another day, a group of us went to the fair on the outskirts of Merida  and as I looked over to the side of the road, there was a compound of white building and at the gate stood a bust of a man, carved in the concrete below, "Dr. Bob" and the AA symbol.

Am I looking for signs pointing me towards AA or are they just appearing?  I don't know.  I don't think I'm ready yet but I have a feeling, some day soon, I will be.