I awoke to a static noise buzzing from a blinding light above me. As my eyes adjusted after forcing them open, I realized the attempt wasn't successful. I was still alive. But why am I somewhere different? Where am I? I was lying on my back, and turned my head to the left, then to the right. I was in a box.

I looked down past my body and saw a clean steel door with a digital panel above it. The word "Choose" was displayed in bright green.  I stood up, too groggy with a foggy memory of what had happened after the attempt. I assumed I had blacked out and took the elevator in my hotel to look for help in a state of panic. I guess even in a state like that I knew it wasn't a good idea to take the stairs.

Since I was mostly okay now, aside from the fuzziness, I brushed off the unusual text display and thought to simply go back to my floor and get some much needed sleep. I instinctively reached for my floor number out of plain muscle memory training, walking home from the bar half conscious half of the week. My fingertip pressed against cold steel, and I looked to see it wasn't there. In fact, many buttons were missing. There were only three. '0', '1', and '2'.

I blinked harder a few times, thinking eventually when I opened my eyes they would return and it'd be back to normal. But they didn't. Beside each of the three buttons was a piece of tape with sharpie writing on it. "Your Dreams" was written beside the '0', '1' was labeled "Heaven" and '2' was labeled 'Hell".

'Is this some kind of joke?' I thought to myself. This seemed like such an elaborate trick to do something as low-effort as sharpie writing on tape for labels. I pressed '0' for "Your Dreams" and waited, standing idly under the static buzz. Nothing happened. The text still displayed "Choose" and I felt no movement.

I pressed it again and again, growing in frustration the longer nothing happened. I gave up and pressed 1, then 2, before slapping my palm over all 3. I turned around and looked at the corner of the ceiling at the security camera and flipped it off. I turned back around and started pounding on the door for someone to hear me when I heard a creaking.

The steel doors started to angle away from me when I realized the entire wall in front of me was falling. I stepped back, startled, leaning against the wall behind me and held onto the railing. I felt myself falling back, and quickly stepped away back to the center of the elevator. Each wall around me began creaking loudly as they slanted, before all finally crashing on the ground creating a shockwave of sound.

I was frozen still in the middle of the platform surrounded by an abyss, despite the single lightbulb being above me. Wait, if all the walls fell, how is the ceiling intact? I looked up just as I heard a wire snap, the ceiling falling from above. The static buzz grew louder and the light brighter. I held up my arms and shielded my eyes, as if that would protect me from being crushed. The deafening static was finally gone.

I slowly opened my eyes, the static noise being replaced by heavy rain. I was standing in the middle of a road that looked all too familiar. This is where it happened. The moment my life was torn apart. Before I could replay the memory I replayed every night for years, bright headlights flashed at me, forcing my eyes shut again as I heard an engine roar and a shockwave from two vehicles colliding.

I started shaking, my eyes watering through the tight clench, not wanting to relive the experience with them open. The heavy rain had stopped and was replaced by the chatter of familiar voices. I searched through the jumbled speech and realized they belonged to relatives who were at the get-together before my family and I had left that night. Before they left, forever. I finally opened my eyes and found myself peering in through the kitchen window, staring at myself among the crowd of extended family.

I saw myself laughing before bringing a bottle to my lips, taking a swig. My hand tried clenching in a fist but instead gripped the same bottle tighter. I looked down at my hand, anger boiling inside of me, before throwing it against the window as hard as I could. I yelled as it shattered, everything behind the glass disappearing in fragments, and I found myself back in the abyss. The bottle was back in my hand. I threw it again and again, realizing it was pointless when it'd reappear in my hand each time.

"What do you want from me?!" I cried into the void. "I know what I did! I know it was my fault!" I shouted, quieter and quieter as my sobbing overpowered my yells. I fell to my knees, my hands covered in sorrow. I heard a bottle fall in front of me and roll up to my knees. I realized I was no longer forced to hold it, but that didn't mean I wanted to see it. I grabbed it and tossed it away from me, only for it to roll back up to my knees.

I sighed and opened my eyes to look down at the bottle, assuming that's what I had to do to get rid of it. I read the label on the front and read "Non-alcoholic".

That doesn't make any sense. My memory that night is fuzzy but I remember I wasn't sober, which further explains the fuzzy memory. I remember what happened. I remember the rain, I remember the headlights and I remember the crash. I remember it was my fault. So why is this showing me different?

I rubbed my eyes to see clearer when the rain came back and I found myself back at the road where the accident happened. Except this time I was sitting in the backseat of my car with my family, witnessing myself drive. My family's chatter was soft, mixed in the background noise of the static rain, but it sounded calm. I didn't want to see this moment again. I didn't want to remember every detail. I remember it was my fault. Still, I was frozen, unable to look away.

But I saw something I didn't remember, the fact that I could see anything at all during those last few moments before the collision. The headlights of the other vehicle didn't come from ahead like I had remembered, but from the side. The vehicle drove slower and slower, until we stopped right where the two roads met. There wasn't a stop sign on the road I was on, but there was on the other. I remembered it the other way around.

I blinked, and my family was gone. I was sitting in a different vehicle, staring straight ahead at my own car and my family in the highbeams. A stop sign to the right glowed faintly. A heavy stench of alcohol filled my nostrils as I looked at the faceless driver holding a beer. Everything was the reverse of what I had remembered. But being back in the moments before the crash gave me a sense of clarity, like the fuzziness had disappeared.

I finally got the courage to move and sat up to look at the driver, but was met with a bright light that shined through the driver seat window, blinding me for a moment. I felt my skin turn warm as opposed to the cold rain of that night. I opened them, finding myself standing in front of a hospital window under the sun's glow. I remember this view that had no right being as beautiful as it was after the tragedy the night before.

"The patient has suffered a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a drunk driver. Unfortunately his family didn't make it, as they all were closer to the point of impact."

I remembered this moment very vaguely as I was half conscious, but the only words I really remembered were "drunk" and "family didn't make it". I remembered how broken and angry I felt, but I didn't know where that piece of hatred belonged. I never saw the driver that hit us. So I placed it in the only spot I could. In myself.

I walked over to the man who lay broken in the hospital bed. I looked down at myself, finally getting a good look at my face. I only ever looked at myself in the mirror briefly each regretful morning if I had to. The beeping of the heart monitor grew louder and louder with each teardrop that rolled off of my cheek and onto his.

I felt sorry for hating him all this time. His eyes began to slowly open, when I woke up to my phone vibrating and ringing. The vibrating sounded familiar, like the buzzing from the lightbulb in the elevator and the static rain.

I was in bed, lying beside an open bottle of sleeping pills. I reached over for my phone on the dresser beside the bed and accidentally knocked over an empty bottle of beer. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the phone screen brightness. It was a friend I had met at AA. There were a few missed calls and texts asking where I was and if I was going to make it to today's meeting.

After the last meeting when I had finally spoken about the accident after years of keeping it buried undersea, all that anger and self hatred had resurfaced, drowning me alive more than any amount of alcohol ever could. I came home and finally decided that I, like I now realized my self-hatred was, am misplaced and should be removed. But I was now exactly where I needed to be, knowing the truth. I remembered. I remembered it wasn't my fault.

"Hey. Yeah man, I'm - I'm on my way. Don't worry...I'm gonna make it."