Summer was a whirlwind of rediscovered novelty, meeting new people, sparkling new relationships without the hassle of bittersweet ends - only a quick wave, a goodbye, and a jet-plane away from the complications that threatened to develop. It seemed like good, fuss-free fun that I would not miss.

And yet, in Cambridge, in the dead of the night, pangs of loneliness strike here in GMT +0 as they always have, and this time there is no Summer fling to distract myself from it. It seems egotistical to wonder if the boys I left behind feel the same way about me - probably not, not in the city of opportunities. It brings to mind a passage I read about in someone's trevvy docket -

"It was... wonderfully fun, those years... Clicking onto people like magnets - That's how it was, entering a room... Lovers everywhere. People you'd had, people you might soon have. Oh, God, and the way you stared and the way you were stared at. You could fall in love with anything - a jawline, a chin - because it didn't have to last beyond the half-hour. And everything was understood; no negotiations that made you lose your apetite for the prize. You'd see someone, you'd find him early; and you didn't think - is he going to like me, is he smart, will we have anything to talk about? No, you thought: there's my evening. And the glitter in his eyes, taking you in as if you were a newly discovered continent. And it might last an hour, or sometimes a day, or some amazing times a month, but it never got stale, because the minute you felt yourself start to become boring, you'd just click away - scarcely even saying goodbye. And never - never - any regret, because there was always someone else who'd fall in love with you a few minutes away."

Definitely egotistical. How could they miss me, when I certainly didn't? I don't know if he wrote that, or if it came from a novel - if it did I would love to read it. It was a beautiful passage that captured Summer - Singapore was that for me. In Cambridge I must prepare myself for the monastic lifestyle the leaves no recourse for these needy pangs.

But most of all, the return of these feelings acts as a reminder that none of the games I played came up to anything. Over summer I learned to flirt insincerely, to play them fairly, and yet selfishly. I brazenly promised nothing, asked nicely for what I wanted, and I won, but what was the point? I merely hardened hearts that would be broken by others - there is no lasting triumph here, I cannot say that I will live on in the memory of hurt.

And then there was Zul, the ever present ex, the one influence that keeps drawing me back in despite the unsustainable nature of our relationship. He is the last bastion of romance - something in him still calls out to whatever is left of the illogical soul within me, with his half-bungled attempts at romance with other boys. He loses, we laugh about it, but it is a laughter that carries within it a strangely romantic understanding. There are days I wonder if I should have met him at a different time. But these hypothetical questions are useless - In these later years I may very well have passed him over for a needy, immature boy still grasping for that elusive ideal that is all-consuming love.

I say that I don't want to be hurt again, that I don't want to center my life around another person because that person will leave, eventually, through my fault or his. I don't want to have to reconstruct my life each time it happens. I say that I want to live for myself, that I want to guarantee my own happiness, even at the expense of others foolish enough to take the plunge when there are so many glittering alternatives available.

I have done all that, and yet the same, dull, loneliness is still here to haunt.

I've realized that I still don't know what I'm looking for. I have a vague image of receiving a teddy bear and actually not hating the person for it.

The city disappoints. I should have known it would, but I honestly thought otherwise. It was deeply foolish to romanticize home as a hotbed of new discoveries in a familiar land. This place is just as it was when I left, and there is no reason for it to change for me.

The friendships are the same - the same joys, the same annoyances, the same failure to view you as an individual different from the person they first met. The materialism of it all - if only because this island recognizes nothing else but success. The dullness of the average person, not necessarily because they are intrinsically insipid, but because all individualism blends together in this dense city of 4.5 million. And the vices - the dark escapes that we hatch in our moonlit flats, the acts of rebellion against conformity that deviate with such uniformity. Everything about this place suggests more, and it is always falling short.

There are valuable things to miss about this place - the food, the efficiency, the security - and all of this makes Singapore a good place to live. There are abstract things to miss about Cambridge - the idealism, the intellectual environment, the privileged aura - and all of this makes Cambridge a good place to study. But it seems that home, or at least my conception of it, lies not in a geographical position, but in a few select friends - the friends to whom I recount my hopes and disappointments, with whom I pick apart the events of our lives to find the same nothingness inside.

Is it the flesh that calls out to flesh, or the heart that calls out to a heart?

I can’t decide which phrase to put ahead of the other, since to do so would place emphasis on the first and less on the second. When loneliness strikes, which comes first - the desire for physical intimacy, or for deeper understanding? I’ve decided on this order because the mental image of an embrace seems to offer respite, but I’m sure that the symbol of the heart encompasses far more of this pain.

The heart. Where emotions are born, where identity resides. The core of our being, the centre. You would think it immovable, and yet it yearns.

The loneliness that one feels in the dark of the night is a strange, untraceable emotion. It is painful, that much I know. But unlike most pains – pains of failure, of inadequacy, of heartbreak – this one has no particular cause. The heart does not yearn for another specific heart, just as the skin does not long for specific flesh.

All I know is that it yearns.

Finding something to yearn for is a respite in itself. An embrace. The fantasies that ensue – the situations we hope to create, the revelations we hope to discover – these are all comforts from this bleak nothingness. They may be mere dreams, but all dreams have a direction.

And thus, the difficulty of finding someone becomes a tragic mockery of our uniqueness – a reminder that once again, we are special, and alone.