Do things have to be distinct from you to be alive? Well, think about this. There are some kinds of insects like cicadas that grow special organs inside their bodies where certain kinds of bacteria live inside the cells. These bacteria in turn get lots and lots of food from the cicadas. And they cannot live outside of the cicados. They will die. But we ourselves are resident to some former bacteria. Two billion years ago, our single cell ancestors conformed a union with these oxygen-consuming bacteria which later became mitochondria,. We take out our mitochondria, we're dead.