I have a note scrawled on a torn piece of notepad paper, stained now, wrinkled from being folded and unfolded, kept and tucked away, found, thrown away, dug back out of the trash and kept again.

I wrote it in the depths of despair, one night after self-medicating with everything I could find and nothing worked, after trying to sleep and sleep not coming, after walking in circles around the block, after creating a new manifesto for my future and then throwing it away because it was hopeless. Then I had a brief glimmer of positivity, a small glint of appreciation for just sitting there breathing, because I know the alternative, because I have seen too much death.

Note just says "It doesn't matter what you do with it, just being alive is enough."

It's impossible to "waste" your life, it's impossible to "waste" time. Even if that time is spent miserable, struggling, or in absolute sedentary escape from reality. You are alive, you are breathing, you are experiencing things. That's all the universe wants from you, is for you to experience it in some capacity. It's the only reason you're here. You need the universe, the universe needs you, they don't exist without each other and even if you're just mindlessly scrolling the internet from under the covers of the bed you haven't left in three days, you are alive, you are experiencing the full force of human "aliveness" even if you're sad, scared, uncertain or in pain. You're here to experience it because at some point, it will all be about to end, and nothing you did will be any more or less relevant to your present moment. You will only want your present moment to continue, you will want that more than anything imaginable, you will long for your depression, your blankets, your dirty jacket and your phone. Just one more minute, just one more chance to see something or feel something.

You get to experience all of that right now, you can stretch it out, you can appreciate the small, stupid things in your life right now. It doesn't matter if your life doesn't look like someone else's, what matters is you're living it.