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.