PERPETUAL MOTION — A THREE‑PART MEMOIR BLAST - This blast is about my personal growth

PERPETUAL MOTION — A THREE‑PART MEMOIR BLAST 

I. The Action — The Compliment That Named Me

We were in Stockholm, sipping £15 glasses of wine — the kind you stretch out, the kind you let glow. (knowing a two glass limit)

And Angela looked at me and said:

“When you’re in a room, it’s like the room sparkles around you.  (Magical)

People dance around you.

You become the centre without even trying.”

Just that.

Simple.

Accurate.

A sentence that rearranged something in me.

I’ve had a lot of lovely compliments — probably more than my average share, and maybe that’s because I’m a very complimentary person myself.

But this one?

This one stuck.

II. My Interpretation — Understanding My Own Physics

I’ve always said I’m fabulous in chaos.

Animated in a crowd.

Alive when the room is moving.

But Angela’s words didn’t flatter me — they reflected me.

They explained the thing I’ve always felt but never named:

I don’t walk into a room and take the centre.

I walk in and the centre forms around me.

It’s not ego.

It’s not performance.

It’s perpetual motion — the way my energy moves, the way people respond, the way the atmosphere lifts like someone opened a window.

Her compliment wasn’t decoration.

It was diagnosis.

It was truth.

III. My Growth — Owning the Sparkle

And now?

Now I can say it without shrinking:

Yes. I do sparkle.

Not glitter.

Not showmanship.

Not noise.

Sparkle as in:

the room shifts,

the molecules rearrange,

people lift,

energy finds its shape.

Sparkle as in:

I see people,

and they feel seen.

Sparkle as in:

I bring animation,

and animation brings connection.

This is my growth:

not learning to sparkle —

I’ve always done that —

but finally recognising it,

owning it,

and letting it be part of my story instead of something I downplay.

Footnote

This blast is about my personal growth — about finally recognising my own sparkle after years of imposter syndrome. It’s about the people I hold dear, the ones whose words I tucked away deep down because I didn’t have the space, the balance, or the ND‑brain capacity to process them at the time. These are their words, churned back to the surface now that I can hold them.

To the best of my knowledge, if she ever reads this, I hope it’s as I heard it — as I stored it, saved it, tucked it away. Two interpretations always exist: the teller and the told. And this is mine, filtered through an ND brain doing its best to balance memory, meaning, and the moment I finally had space to hold it.