So after I left that comment to you yesterday, I mentioned the situation to my husband, along with my suspicion that in the past weeks when you were flooded with comments you were overwhelmed and it burnt you out.  Considering it's a very real possibility that this will happen to many early adopters when the site gets flooded, he came up with a practical solution:
Write a post expressing your gratitude for every single individual who leaves a comment, then explain (as you did a bit in your later posts) that due to the volume it simply isn't possible to respond to everyone.  Then say something like, "From now on I will respond to every tenth comment. My hope is that at some point each valued friend that stops by will end up in that spot."
And do not deviate. Even if the the tenth comment is utter garbage--if they say Nice Post, you say Thanks! You can always go to someone's page or chat if you come across a comment you really want to respond to. Or actually, you can just wait a day or two and sneak back over ;)
Anyway, I could be totally wrong about your reason for being absent this long, but if I'm not, I hope this idea helps. I definitely miss your style.  (I'm one of those odd people it seems, that do not have that out of sight, out of mind issue, lol ;)