Existence must exist at all times.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well... I guess my whole point is : nothing can't be.

There isn't an alternative universe that isn't a universe

There are no hypothetical absences of universes. Universes are present by nature of being a universe.

I think it's just the way things are, cause and effect, reality had to be.

I mean, it goes with my intuition too that the universe is eternal, with no beginning and no end. The big crunch theory is no longer the main theory, the universe will keep expanding forever: is the current theory. And time began, the big bang began, and nothing was before time but there was never a time when nothing happened. It's by the very nature of time that there was no "Before time".

I guess that's it, existence is time. There was no time before time because "Before" itself is temporal. And is it not also true that time and space have been shown to be the same thing?

Existence is space-time, it seems to me.

If scientists define time a certain way and then they discover things outside of that definintion, they still haven't discovered a time before time. There is no time before time. It would rather be akin to when scientists discovered that the atom is not indivisible even though that's initially what an atom meant: something indivisible. Scientists do brilliant work but once they realize that something isn't what they thought it was they still continue to keep the label. Such it must also be with time if they ever discover a "time before time". Just like when Lawrence Krauss talks of a universe coming from "nothing" when he's talking about quantum empty space rather than nothing.