overlap

I know I keep coming back to it, and I don't expect that's over yet, but my latest take on the last few weeks goes something like this... Over the couple of years where GUsparkliness has become an increasingly important part of my life, my rate of sparkly development has steepened. Over the isolation of the previous couple of decades, everything moved in a very gradual way, punctuated with the occasional moment of revelation within relationships. When that did happen within relationships, it often had the effect of a dam bursting; with all the secrecy involved, it has frequently been a case of going from something pushed deep into the background to something that was suddenly in the spotlight. And having finally got it there (for however long that might last) it was natural enough to want to make the most of that opportunity, and usually to the detriment of other aspects of the relationship. Eventually that flood would subside, usually having taken something of the relationship with it, and the relationship would find its own end in its own time, and I'd be back not quite where I started but with an increased openness threshold. Fast forward through a couple of years of discussion, of watershed moments of meeting people for the first and further times, and gradually feeling I was getting to know some of them, of increased comfort levels with both the subject and the issue. I'm happier and more comfortable with my particular -ism than I've ever been, and the role of GUsparkliness in getting to that point is impossible to overstate. I mean, until I stumbled into blogging there was practically nowhere else I ever discussed it, in any aspect. With all the build up to the day itself, and certain preparatory targeted shopping and so on, for the first time ever I may have found the damburst effect swamping me as well. I can only say this in hindsight, but I put so much time and emotion into making sure I felt comfortable enough to go through with it, there maybe wasn't much of the rest of me left. It would explain a certain amount of thousand yard stare on the day, which I'm sure was easily observable, and what followed over the rest of the week. It's been a very long time since I cried quite like that, and I couldn't even give you a particular reason why, beyond the whole intensity of how I felt. Seeing larger threads being culled that week, I went back while I still could to check how graceless an exit I'd made, and found loads of lovely goodbye-for-now wishes, which set me off again. My relationship with the communal GUsparkliness as a whole, though it naturally varies with different individuals, is very important to me, and it worried me immensely that I might jeopardise any of that. Relationships come and go, but this has become so much more important, and that's why I felt that taking a step or six back was the right thing to do at the time, so I could just get on with it and step away from worrying about the risk of alienating people (see information damburst theory). I've had email conversations with several people since, and I'm very happy to do so, but to force the post-Savoy coping subject on people feels like an imposition that nobody else signed up for. And if anyone feels that's what I've done (and I can think of people who'd be perfectly justified in feeling that), then I'm very sorry - I just hope that I managed to stop that before it got too out of hand. Everything's quite a bit clearer now and I'm a lot happier about the whole subject, but if you wondered where I've been and why, well, I guess this is a reasonable summary of the story so far. As for finding my way back, well, I've made the occasional visit back, but I really don't need to put myself or anyone else through all this again, so I'll be hanging around in the shallow end for a while yet.