Kinda strange – a couple of friends have recently revealed, in an awkward, almost-embarrassing-revelation kind of way, that they read this, and hope I don’t mind. Of course I don’t mind – it’s stuff I’d tell them anyway, after a conversation gets in depth enough. But the strange bit is that people now know what’s happening in my life before I tell them, already conversant in the latest minor ups and downs and items of interest.

In other news, uni’s back on, my final semester. It’s terrifying in a way – five years since high school, it’ll be, five years. Quick years, fun years, and now wham, I’ll be qualified (presumably), patted on the back and pointed towards the workforce. I might well detour overseas for an extended period of time before braving the job-hunting and eventual job-getting and nine-to-sixing and rearranging my life around an expectation and an income other than an artificial subsidy from centrelink and a job one or two days a week.

I feel nearly ready to leave uni, though, no wish to linger in academia, no desire to stay for any other reason than the people, the wonderful people and the sense of almost community that five years in a place with people like me generates.

last week i spent an hour inside a sociopath's head.i've started doing real telephone counselling at last, and while it's been a real buzz to have strangers unfold before me, the guy who called last week really messed with my head. counselling is confidential, so no names or other identifying features of any kind are used, but god, i still need to put this out there, to distance myself from it.

ok, so it's my second shift, i'm nervous and emotional cos my lover's about to leave and this guy calls, and we talk. it's hard to talk to him, he wants me to do all the work and i do. but then he starts to loosen up a bit, talk about this wall of distance between him and the world, of the "horrors inside his head", of loneliness and boredom. but while he tells me these things, he fluctuates between monotone and flashes of anger - he tells me to fuck off, voice raised past flat depression into a quick flare, and i'm reminded of an ant-lion, the cunning predator that lies in wait for hours until an unwary ant nears his trap, and then - quick flare, aggression. i don't think i'm conveying this well, but i'll try. the feeling i'm trying to get across is that of prey. the conversation goes on, for quite a while; i roam all over the place, trying to find places to build on, areas of less negativity, less anger, and gradually i come to realise he doesn't want to change, he doesn't want 'help', he wants me there with him. we aren't going anywhere, so i say we'll have to wrap the call up, and he hangs up before i can finish the sentence.

then he calls back, and gets me again. he hangs up. calls back. gets me, hangs up. finally, he decides to go with me again, but this time, he's someone else. haven't we talked before, i ask. no, definitely not. and this time he's someone else, someone he makes before my eyes, creating a massive tower of lies - a cabinetmaker, a musician, a fan of 80's music - and then suddenly he's in a wheelchair, blind as well, and i'm tired and we're not going anywhere, and i tell him that we've only got a couple of minutes left, and suddenly the real him is back, vicious. "Did you really believe all that?" he hisses and slams down the phone and i feel dirty, dirty, dirty. it takes me two days to wash off that call, the feeling of being so close to someone who toys with you and is smart, who knows the counselling method, who uses it like that to test the mettle of the person at the other end of the phone.

it's making me tougher, that's for sure. with this call, once i twigged, my walls were up and we were playing a game, just a dirty little game.

This one is hard to write. Sigh.

I've had a lover for the last month or so, and she flew to London yesterday to work for seven months. Now she's left, I feel clearer - the last two weeks were a whirlwind, the frenzied intensity of living and loving knowing it was going to end soon. Clearer, but emptier. I have time again, time and distance and my life back in my own hands.

God, it was wonderful. I've never had a lover before, always girlfriends. The idea of a 'lover' is fantastic, falling beautifully into the gap between a physical-based fling and a relationship. I don't think we would have been able to create something so intense and all-consuming without the time-limit. It was set from the first time I met her, her ticket paid for and plans in motion, and this, the fleeting time beforehand was all we had to fashion something beautiful.

Strange though - from the beginning, I knew we were to end, and that made me unwilling to fall in love with my lover, but one night, she came back drunk and told me she loved me and I could not deny that this was true, that what we had could be called love, for want of a better name. The two of us, we did not believe in love - I by hurt, she by cynicism - but this was something which needed a name. Perhaps love is just clinging and holding and closeness and intimacy and knowing another.

I didn't write about my lover before because she was here and time was short and to write about someone and something is to change it. I don't really know what else to write - I have a store of her, but to put any more of it out here, I think not yet, too fresh, too close.

Next week, a road trip, some travel and some distance and some time to clear me and settle me. Life is amazing. Three months ago I was on my knees. Now, awe and wonder and gratitude.