you are alive

"if you are reading this, congrtulations, you are alive. if that's not something to smile about then i don't know what is"

I said this to a friend this morning, in the context of it being a quote that really helped me get through my week. admittedly, it's been a hard week. her response was that it is a really depressing quote, she wants to be more than just alive. it made me realise that my view and hers of "alive" differ quite extremely. the feeling she gets when one uses alive as a response to "how are you" (just for example) is that they are just barey coping, all they are feeling is heart beats and not much more. now higher functioning, no happiness, just barely hanging on to life. whereas, i really agree very strongly with the quote above. if being alive is not something to smile about then i really don't know what is. life is such a prescious gift. i mean wow, you wake up in the morning, you stretch and yawn and wish you could sleep another hour, and drag yourself off to the shower and the coffee, and you are ALIVE! another day, a new experience. alive may seem like such a small thing at times, but without it you have nothing else. NOTHING ELSE. you feel pain, you have bad days, you have great days, you have friends and enemies, and people in ur life who make no impact, and people who have been in ur life for 7 weeks and have changed it forever. this is Alive, this is life. there is nothing more amazing or more wonderful, even in it's shittiest moments, the moments when you rail against fate, rail against ur own existense. because there are moments when you soar, when you are at the height of achievement, when you are surrounded by friends and laughter, and i wouldn't trade all that pain for death, for the decision to never feel that happiness again. i almost did once. i never will again.

that is all