Originally Posted by
Plath 
Moving to a small town and becoming less tolerant of chaos and drama has forced me to interact with an entirely different facet of society that I'm absolutely not comfortable with.
I used to live in Flagstaff, Arizona -- and I actually liked the small-town aspect, for a reason that might be surprising: Precisely because you frequently run into people you know around town. Which means that you frequently run into people
you know from Al-Anon around town.
I have never been able to understand why people say, "I don't want to go to a meeting where I live, because I might run into people I know, and they'd see me outside." Why is that not a
good thing? It means that you've got friends who
get it and understand the issues we deal with, that most people think are "weaknesses."
And if you run into an enemy (or "frenemy") at a meeting, that might be good, too -- and after a few meetings, you might not be enemies anymore!
T