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.