About how growing old scares me

I have irrational fears I know, but I can't help it. Growing old terrifies me. I was reading Love in the Time of Cholera and I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of the book but mostly I remember it confirming everything that scares me about age. I mean to say that I do understand that the book is about how love is persistant and resilient and people can love more than one person without being disloyal and how love is still present at all ages. I get that. I'm just saying that I took from the book every thing that is described with the coming of age. Senility, stumbling, suffering, a certain smell (I actually am sorry about that alliteration). I don't understand why I fear things that are for the most part inevitable. I have a preoccupation with death too which is more ineveitable than old age, I suppose, since there is always the possiblity of death before old age, but that is something else intirely. A lot of people grow old, and I know it brings wisdom and hindsight and all this possitive stuff, but I watch old people and what I see is time. I see it in the shaking of their hands, their confused looks, their shuffled steps, and I want to cry, because I'm terrified of when that will be me. I am sure it stems back to my ultimate fear of uncertainty, but again, I can't help it. When I see old people I try to imagine them as they were when they were younger and full of life. I hope they experienced amazing things and don't have any regrets, and I think that is why I'm living my life like I am, so I can have something to look back at. I don't know if this sounds selfish or cruel, but I want my life to be more than just raising my kids. Don't get me wrong, I really want to raise kids, it is just that I think I also want more. I don't know. When I talk, I just seem to confuse myself more.

*apologies to Hayley, who will end up reading this again in close to 3 weeks*