Things change yet so much stays the same
Life's just a dream we have of reality
Love's strength enhances what we have
And then strips us of our sanity.
-- Lamb, Closer

Things have been pretty strange since I last wrote here, with a lot of things changing -- though, on the whole, in good ways.

I've recently got back in touch with some folks I'd not seen in a long time, and it continues to be a pleasant surprise how people can change in positive ways. I've no idea of people's usernames on here, so apologies for not mentioning them directly, but I ended up visiting a houseful of (mostly) furs, all but one of whom I'd met previously; the one non-fur there unexpectedly turned out to be an old friend from roleplaying, who I'd not seen in a long time. I got on well with everyone, and a couple of other folks I knew visited while I was there:  rma-reborn and  hazelwolf. I got on really well with Hazel in particular, and when I became upset for no clear reason rather late in the last evening/night of my visit, he held me close all night which made me feel a hell of a lot better.

The following weekend, I was due to be in Manchester with  balkor, but... well, I don't want to go into the details, but talking to him a couple of days before, it turned out we didn't feel the same as each other. I suspect we were more fond of an idea than the actuality, to put it in rather vague terms. I'm hoping we can reconcile and still be friends, but unfortunately I don't think we're going to work as more than that for some time. It's sad, of course, but in a way it's better than this limbo-state we'd been in for the last 4 or 5 months. We made each other happy, when we were together; but somehow we couldn't get that back. I guess it's like when you have a really good dream, you can't remember all the details and you can't make it repeat, but you can still have a happy memory.

Not wanting to sit at home on my own, with most people offline and at the meet, I floated the idea with Hazel that he might want to come stay with me, as he didn't seem overly keen on going to the meet either. As this was rather last-minute, I didn't really expect it'd work; however, after thinking about it overnight or so, he decided he'd come up on Friday evening and stay the weekend.

This went about 1000x better than I had any right to expect. Without going into every detail, it was an entirely lovely weekend; the only disadvantage being the time seemed to slip away rather quickly. So that nobody gets the wrong impression, I've known Hazel on and off for years, but we'd not spent time with just us before. With that out of the way... there seem to be pretty good odds of us getting together. And that would pretty much be the best Xmas present ever.