"You Used To Enjoy Life More", He Said.

"You used to enjoy life more," he said.

And I suppose, from his vantage point, he sees a shadow growing within me… an unraveling, a deepening disdain for life itself. I understand why he might think that. My existential dread, removing myself from a faith I never truly believed in, the fact that I now smoke more weed than I ever imagined I would… it all paints a picture of someone losing themselves.

But if he truly looked, he’d see a woman who has never embraced life more fully. I have written so many love poems- poems in general. I have allowed myself to dress in colors I once shied away from. I listen to opera and classical music without shame, letting every note ripple through me. I have bared my body for him in ways that feel like art, like devotion. I have reached for him more, touched him more, memorized his features with a reverence I never had before. I have embraced his children as my own, not out of duty, but out of a deep yearning to build something real, something lasting. I have taken and cherished over two thousand photos, capturing fleeting moments as if each one might be my last. My existential dread does not rob me of joy… it amplifies it. Because when you live with the half-belief that life may not go on, every second becomes sacred. You don’t take anything for granted. You love harder. You live more.

And the weed? The edibles? No medicine has ever done for me what they do. If I had never tried it -carefully, responsibly, as an adult- I might not be here at all. I'd have ended my life before I turned 25.

Leaving religion shattered me, and the aftershocks still echo through my soul. I feel everything now, raw and unfiltered, gulping down the full weight of existence. I sit with every emotion, even the ones that cut deep. I am still mourning the belief I forced upon myself, and the quiet collapse of it is an unseen grief… unacknowledged, unintentionally ignored. It is the kind of pain one must endure alone. And yet, I let myself feel it. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. I feel. And that intensity never fades, only shifts.

To have a wife who feels everything, who writes it, sings it, watches it unfold in movies-stories that mirror her own, who photographs it, talks about it, cries over it, laughs through it, documents it, displays it, loves it, fears losing it… how can you say she enjoys life less? To say that is to dismiss every breath she takes, every heartbeat that aches with the weight of wanting more time.

I do not enjoy life less.

I cherish it so deeply, so desperately, that you simply don’t recognize it anymore.

And yet, I wonder… do you miss the version of me that lived without this sharp awareness? The one who smiled out of habit, who believed, however falsely, that she had all the time in the world? Do you long for the girl who existed before she questioned, before she tore apart the scaffolding of faith and replaced it with raw, unfiltered reality? Because I miss her sometimes too. I miss the ease of certainty, the comfort of believing in something beyond myself. I miss praying, not for the answers, but for the feeling that someone …something… was listening. I miss blind hope. I miss being naive.

But I would not trade what I have now to go back. I would not trade this depth, this hunger, this desperate need to soak up every ounce of existence while I still can. I would not trade the way I now hold your face in my hands, memorizing its lines as if I may never see them again. I would not trade the way I press my lips to your skin and think, thank God …no, not God, but thank something… thank this moment. Thank now. Because I do not know if there is anything beyond this. I do not know if we will meet again in some afterlife or if we will simply vanish into nothing. And because I do not know, I love you harder.

Every kiss is a kind of prayer. Every embrace is an offering. Every photograph I take is a desperate attempt to keep something that cannot truly be kept.

Do you see it now? Do you see how I have not lost my love for life but deepened it to an unbearable intensity? I am not drifting away… I am sinking deeper.

I do not laugh as often as I once did, perhaps. I do not invent excitement where I do not feel it. But do not mistake my quiet for absence. Do not mistake my solemn moments for indifference. I feel everything… even the weight of your words “You used to enjoy life more”

No, my love. I enjoy life so much more than I ever did before. I feel it in my bones. I ache with it. I wake up each morning and wonder if this is the last sunrise, rainfall, summer day…. I will ever see, and I watch it like it is. I hold your hand like I might never hold it again. I listen to music like it is being sung by ghosts.

I do not take a single second for granted.

If that is not enjoying life… if that is not loving it with everything I have… then tell me, what is?