I could leave the whole blog there, right? But nope.

Women in the UK now have the second shortest life expectancy in the whole of Europe at 82 years and 9 months, and it's expected that a full 19 years of that time will be spent in ill health.

Seems like forever and a day, right?

So let's bring it down to a unit that makes sense.

How was your day at work today?

Did you have a good day?

Do anything that made you particularly proud or that will be a highlight for you?

Spend most of it watching the clock to get home, only to collapse on the sofa in exhaustion?

Today was one of 30,000.

82 years and 9 months is around 30,000 days.

Let's lend a little more context for that.

See, maybe it's because I was a bit of an emo-brat or maybe because I lost each of my parents at such young ages but I've thought quite a lot about the meaning of our short lives, what I want to achieve, how I want to leave my mark.

My parents lived for between 20,000 and 24,000 days each.

I have been on this planet for a little over 12,000 days.

That puts it in to sharp context, doesn't it?

Look at my parents and more than half of my life is done, and I've barely fucking STARTED.

Are you ready to say that you halfway, or nearly halfway through everything you can do, everything you will achieve?

Have you put your thousands of days to great use?

Or have you let them pass you by, like grains of sand dropping through the egg timer, one by one.

One hungover,

Another in bed with the flu

Another sleeping off how hard I worked this week.\

Again and again and again.

Numbing yourself out with food and alcohol and bullshit like Love Island and Celebrity Big Brother (I mean seriously, spending time sitting in the dark watching other people sit around and cut each other down? At least the Romans were honest about their blood sports).

What happened to your dreams?

To the big things that you were going to achieve?

Before you got exhausted, before you worked yourself into the ground again and again and again.

This is what I know.

You are a beautiful, bright spark of humanity and love and fun and pure pure joy.

You deserve so much more than to tick tock tick tock your life away, letting your days slip through your fingers, letting your precious life slip away.

You are stardust.

You are the brightest firework.

You deserve to bask in the light and warmth and glory of love, the joy of the people around you, the sun and the stars.

So why for the love of all that is precious are you dimming your light? Consciously turning down the volume on the melody? Holding yourself back from dancing with joy?

Don't tell me it's because you have responsibilities, because you have to be a grown up, because because because the stuff, the things, the rubbish.

You are a spark of light.

Stardust.

Precious.

Stop pretending otherwise.

Stop pretending you can wait.

Stop pretending you'll do it later.

Not a single one of us knows how long we have on this planet and you can't RELY on a single day more.

If the world ended tomorrow, and let's be honest it well could, would you honestly say you had set out to achieve all you wanted to, do everything you said you would do, loved fiercely and honestly, created and danced and sang like the wild creature you are?

Or did you let fear and worry and responsibility and the structures and shit confine you?

If it seems like I'm angry then that would be because I am. Because this is too big and too important to pretend that I'm anything less than passionate and furious about it.

I'll repeat it again for you: your life is short. Stop wasting it.

Pictured: my beautiful mum, aged 18.