I've sat across from someone saying exactly what you're feeling right now. You look at the person you love, the one you’ve built a life with, and a cold dread snakes its way up your spine. You see the way they move a little slower, the new lines etched around their eyes, the hesitation before they stand up. And the voice in your head, the one you’d never say out loud, whispers: *This is not what I signed up for.* You feel a flicker of resentment, quickly extinguished by shame. You feel the terror of future sickness, of dependency, of becoming a nurse instead of a lover. The fear is not a gentle thing. It’s a raw, guttural recoil from the one truth we spend our lives denying: everything, and everyone, decays. This isn’t a thought problem. It’s a body problem. It lives in the pit of your stomach. It’s the clenching in your jaw when you have to repeat yourself for the third time. It’s the shallow breath you take when you see a new pill bottle on the counter. We have been sold a bill of goods, a fantasy of "growing old together" that looks like two silver-haired