No one is invincible. Life is fragile and fleeting. Death is a guaranteed human experience. Numerous family members and friends have died over the years, and it seems like one cannot observe the news without hearing of at least one story of death. I know this is all true, and I have known it since I was very young. A simple fact of life: people die.

Despite all this, I felt invincible in high school. I knew I could die, sure, but not once did I believe anything in the world could actually touch me. I’ll get injuries from sports and just being a klutz, but never anything too serious. Like the main character of a TV series, I was untouchable. After all, my life is my own TV series where I am the protagonist, and the protagonist just doesn't die. How quickly that false notion changed during my senior year of high school.

Tuesday night, shortly after 9 p.m. I’m stopped at a red light. A white car is in the lane to my left. I’m talking, laughing, listening to music on the radio with my girlfriend and her brother. I’m going to drop them off at their house after seeing a volleyball game at our school. It’s still early in the night, yet the streets are absolutely empty. The light turns green, we then move forward, only to then be moving completely sideways to the right.

Like the ride from hell that just won’t stop when you desperately want it to, our car moves for what feels like an eternity until we finally come to a rest. The car is smokey, the airbags are deployed. My glasses have flown from my head, and all I hear is a constant ringing in my ear and screams. A million thoughts racing through my head all at once. Did I break anything? No. Can I move? Yes. What happened? We’ve been hit. Thank God my girlfriend and her brother are alive. Did I screw up? We pile out of the car and see chaos.

The white car is completely smashed into my car. There’s a third vehicle, the one that hit the white car, and subsequently smashed it into us, in the middle of the intersection. What was an empty street is now completely backed up with cars that arrived just after the accident occurred. I check the driver of the white car, crazily thinking he was just fine. I ask him if he’s OK. He responds by raising his right arm and showing the bone sticking right out of his hand. His legs are smashed together, and somehow his body is more in the back seat than the driver seat. The police and paramedics arrive. Later on, we learn the driver that hit the white car and myself was drunk, running a red light at over 60 MPH. They say we’re lucky to be alive.

The weeks after the accident, I wake up night after night with a nightmare that I’m back in that car, stuck moving when I don't want to be. The ringing in my ear lasts for a month, and even now, more than a year later, comes back once and a while. I am forever changed by that night. I realized shortly after the accident that I very easily could have died that night. If that white car wasn’t there, the full force of that drunk driver would’ve hit me. At the very least, I would’ve broken my arm, my leg, possibly been crippled for the rest of my life. Something as simple as one car being next to me was the difference between me being banged up and me being seriously injured or dead.

I would have never gone to prom senior year. I wouldn’t have graduated high school. I wouldn’t have moved to a new state. I wouldn’t have gone to college. All the memories I’ve made, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve done since the night of that accident until now, could have never happened. I am very lucky to be alive.

I share this story for one reason and one reason only: to change someone, anyone, for the better. Young adults, or anyone frankly, you are not invincible. Any day can truly be your last day on earth. Do not end things poorly with others. Don’t let the potential last memory your family or friends have of you be an argument or mistreatment. Put things into perspective. Really love those you care about.

To anyone who drinks, I am begging you to please not drive when drunk. The drunk who hit us not only ruined other people’s lives, but his life is ruined forever now because of his idiotic decision. Drunk driving is not worth going to prison over, and certainly isn't worth anybody’s life.