When we are alone and as we grow older, the allure of finding someone can become desperation, and we begin to confuse the opportunity of availability with something meaningful. But it is not. We romanticize the idea of the relationship and project it onto the person who kindles nothing in our hearts, attaching holidays and losses to their presence.. While the prospect of someone to share life with, someone to take care of us, yearns within us, we do not need them. We have done without that on our own for years. But, still, we pine for that dream, and we try to make it real with those who were not meant for us, trying to make love appear where it does not exist, letting meaningless considerations dictate our surrender, our settling for nothing. We do not want to be alone, no one does, but we must stop and ask ourselves if those available have ever touched our souls. Do we love them, or do we just fear loneliness? Is what we want an empty acquaintance built upon an illusion of desire we forced? But, most importantly, is there someone else our heart truly wanted and still wants, someone who did touch our soul and remains there, in our soul and in our mind? Someone who makes us feel young again, one who does not confirm that we are old and desperate with their presence, reminding us of why we chose them? Do we act from spite for a loss, for a true connection turned sour? Someone who may not be able to give us our material dreams but can fill our heart with love unfeigned? For that is where we belong, regardless of the lack of immediate comfort, the financial security, the approbation of those around us. That is where we’ve always belonged, and to choose another out of fear of being alone is not fair to the one chosen nor fair to ourselves. Can we let go of the past and forgive the one we hurt, and ourselves, enough to have something worth having, before we are too old for it to matter, once the others have abandoned us as they never loved us? Or will we sacrifice true connection for a manufactured reality with someone who doesn’t really want us either but feels the same need just to have someone? Do we want to pass the rest of our days with someone we don’t really want, hiding our apathy in whatever we can grasp onto in place of love?