How much pain can one person handle before they give up?

Watching children die right in front of their parents’ eyes?

Telling someone that they’re sick, but you don’t have the resources to help them?

Getting an infection from unclean water and living in horrible conditions?

Trying your hardest to travel to every third world country you could possibly think of to avoid going home only to find out your best friend since you were ten-years-old died of pancreatic cancer, and because you didn’t even know he was sick you weren’t there to help? All because you avoided him? Never got a chance to apologize for being such a shitty friend? Never got a chance to say good-bye?

How much is too much?

I take another swig of vodka and let my head thump back against the wall, wondering how much more I can take. I’ve been trying to numb the pain with booze since I came back to the states. It works for a little while. The blur of vodka when it pumps through my veins makes me forget about everything for a few minutes.

A few minutes of peace.

A few minutes of not hearing the cries of babies or the pleas of mothers begging me to save their children.

A few minutes of not seeing Aiden’s face in my head, smirking at me and calling me an asshole.

A few minutes of not thinking about her.

One-hundred-and-eighty-seconds where I can close my eyes and feel nothing.

With my ass on the floor and my legs sprawled out in front of me, I close my eyes and let the quiet bliss takeover, but it’s gone too soon. It never lasts long enough. Not anymore. Not after that letter he wrote.

That fucking letter.

I open my eyes and my body breaks out into a cold sweat when I look at the letter I crumbled up and tossed a few feet away from me. The letter I’ve been rereading for the last three months, ever since it showed up in my mailbox in Cambodia, exactly two weeks after Aiden died.

My eyes stay glued to the ball of paper, Aiden’s neat, block handwriting peeking out of the crushed page, as I bring the vodka back up to my lips and try to drink away the pain and misery swirling around inside of me. It doesn’t even burn anymore when it goes down and I can almost fool myself into believing the water bottle I poured it in is really just water. I don’t know why I bother trying to hide it at this point. My brother has seen all the empty vodka bottles I’ve hidden under my bed and out in the garage behind shelves and boxes. He found an entire box of empty liter bottles in the trunk of my car yesterday that I meant to take out to the garbage dump and get rid of, but never got around to it. Probably because I was too drunk to drive there.

I laugh when I think about the intervention he had with me yesterday morning when he went in my trunk to borrow my jack for a flat tire he needed to change before he left for work. He made me promise to stop drinking. He made me promise to get help. Of course I agreed. He’s my baby brother. I live here with him in our grandparent’s old house until I can get back on my feet. A house my grandmother left to me when she moved away, where Jason was forced to stay so he could take care of the place while I was always gone. And he’s still here, taking care of the house and taking care of me instead of moving out and getting his own life. He puts up with my sorry ass day-in-and-day out and he deserves so much more than having a drunk for a brother who can’t get his shit together.

And I kept my promise. For almost twenty-four-hours, I didn’t touch the one last bottle of Tito’s I had stashed on the top shelf of my closet. I gritted my teeth through the pain of withdrawals and I threw up every ounce of water I tried to get in my system, but I did it. I pushed through it for Jason. I sucked it up for my little brother who lived through the same shitty childhood I did, but never got to escape like me. I dealt with the shakes and the headaches and the puking and the fever so I wouldn’t have to see that same tired, disappointed look in his eyes when he got home from another day of work while I just sat my useless ass on his couch.

“You weren’t supposed to die!” I scream at the letter, still lying a few feet away, taunting me to crawl over to it and read the words inside again. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

The water bottle of vodka crinkles in my hand when I squeeze my fingers around it and angrily bring it up to my mouth, chugging it until it’s almost gone.

Aiden’s voice is buzzing in my ear like an annoying housefly you can’t swat away. It just keeps coming back and coming back, pushing me over the edge until I want to cover my ears and make it stop. The alcohol isn’t working. His voice just won’t go away.

You’re an asshole.

I hope you feel guilty.

Come home.

Come home.

Come home.

I am an asshole. I do feel guilty. And I’m home. I got on the next flight out of Cambodia as soon as that damn letter arrived, not even bothering to call home, just wanting to get back here before it was too late. I acted without thinking and of course I was too late. Too late to say good-bye, too late for the funeral, too late to make amends, too late to do anything but pick up a bottle and try to forget all the mistakes I made. It’s been exactly three months and two weeks to the day my best friend died in his sleep when his body just couldn’t fight any more. Three months and two weeks to the day that he stopping existing.

I’ve spent every waking moment trying to forget about the pain Aiden’s death caused, and then a box of photos fell from the top shelf of my closet when I was looking for something earlier. It came crashing to the floor, spilling memories of Aiden all around my feet. Aiden laughing at me during a game of basketball when we were ten, Aiden smiling at the camera with his arm wrapped around one of his many dates when we were in high school, Aiden smirking as he holds up his college diploma. Every memory of him seeped into my brain and squeezed the life out of my heart until that fucking letter I shoved into the back of my dresser drawer started taunting me to read it again, like he just wants me to be miserable. Like he knew I was trying to do better and he wanted to fuck it all up, make me forget about the promise I made my brother until nothing else mattered but taking a drink so I could make it all go away. I came home, just like he wanted, and all I want to do is leave.

“Do you really want me to take care of our girl now, Aiden?!” I shout towards the ceiling. “I bet she’d be really happy to see me show up at the camp like this.”

I laugh at my words, wondering if it’s the booze or my fucked-up head that’s made me start talking to myself like a crazy person.

“You weren’t supposed to die. You were always supposed to be here,” I mutter, my throat clogging with tears when I look over at his letter again.

I took everything for granted and I have no one to blame but myself. I walked away from my two best friends and never looked back because I was a coward. I always thought in the back of my mind that one day I’d be able to get over my shit, get over how I felt about Cameron, come back home and they’d both be waiting for me, ready to forgive me for being an idiot. But now that’s never going to happen.

Aiden is never going to be there with a smirk on his face and a sarcastic comment at the ready. Cameron is never going to forgive me. For not being there while Aiden was sick, for not doing everything I could to try and save him, and for not going to her right when I got home.

I should have gone to her. We should have been able to mourn Aiden together, but I couldn’t deal with my own pain, let alone hers. I still can’t deal with my own pain.

No one understands what it’s like to come back home after you’ve been on the other side of the world, experiencing horrors no one back here sees or even realizes is happening. They live in their happy little worlds, going about their happy little lives and they forget there are men, women and children without basic medical necessities, like antibiotics, so they too can have those happy lives.

Jason doesn’t understand, even though he tries to.

No one understands what it’s like to be back here. What it’s like to have nothing to do with your free time but think and feel guilty about the people you couldn’t save in another country, or the person you should have saved right here at home. To feel like you’re constantly living in a nightmare where every thought and every memory is a film reel of all the ways you fucked up.

I’m so tired of feeling this pain. I just want relief. I just want to feel nothing at all. My eyelids grow heavy and my vision starts to blur as darkness and the sweet bliss of numbness covers my body like a warm blanket.

“God dammit, Everett! Son of a bitch…”

I hear my brother’s voice and even though it sounds muffled and far away in my drunken brain, I can still hear the anger in it. I don’t even realize I’ve slumped over onto my side until I feel Jason’s arms come under me and slide me back upright against the wall.

“Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes!” Jason shouts close to my face.

The darkness surrounding me disappears when I blink my eyes open as his palm smacks against my cheek.

Sadness, worry, anguish and fear.

That’s what I see written all over my brother’s face as he looks at me and shakes his head. I want to apologize to him that he found me like this, but what’s the point? He’s found me in similar situations many times ever since I got home, and my apologies aren’t worth shit at this point.

I want to tell him that I don’t want this crutch of alcohol. I don’t want to need it, feeling like it’s the only way I can survive the pain. The pain in my gut, the pain in my head, and the pain in my heart. Without drinking, it all comes back until I want to claw at my skin and scream until my throat is hoarse. I open my mouth, but the words won’t come.

He sits down next to me and kicks his legs out in front of him, mirroring my own.

“What was it this time? Flashback? Bad dream?” Jason asks quietly, listing off all the excuses I’ve given him over the last few months when he’s smelled the alcohol on my breath or found me passed out on the couch.

I lean forward to grab the letter from Aiden, but the room spins and I have to quickly lean back against the wall before I puke. Instead, I lift my arm and point to it.

He looks away from me to the crumpled up ball of paper, letting out a big sigh before reaching over to grab it. I watch silently as he un-crinkles it and smooths it out against his thigh. I stare at his face, blinking a few times to keep it in focus, as he reads through the letter.

“Jesus Christ,” he finally whispers. “Where did this come from?”

I clear my throat and look away from him to stare at the opposite wall in our grandparent’s living room before answering him.

“It came when I was in Cambodia. Two weeks after he died.”

Jason doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and I take the time to look around the room. I always loved this house growing up. An old farmhouse on the outskirts of Charleston, it was filled with happy memories and good times, the complete opposite of the home we shared with our mother in New Jersey. I looked forward to spending every summer here with our grandmother. She baked us cookies, she fed us home-cooked meals, and she paid attention to us. She loved us and she cared for us and she did everything she could to make us happy.

This house that was once a dream, now feels like hell. I can’t stand these four walls that surround me, caging me in, not letting me get away from the memories and the pain.

“I’m sorry, Everett. This letter is…shit. I don’t even know what to say about this thing. Why didn’t you tell me? Is this why you’ve been drinking yourself into a coma since you got home?” Jason asks.

“It is what it is,” I shrug, ignoring the drinking comment. “He’s right. I’m an asshole, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

My brother scoffs, pushing himself up from the floor to stand over me. It hurts my head to look up at him. The overhead light is shining in my eyes and stabbing into my skull and I curse when I have to shield my eyes to see his face.

“I know I’ll never understand everything going on in that head of yours. I know I’ll never be able to sympathize with all the shit you saw over there. And I know the sadness I feel about Aiden being gone is nothing compared to what you feel,” Jason tells me. “But enough is enough. You were doing something you loved over there and you didn’t know he was sick. Even if you had, you couldn’t have done anything about it. He had the best medical team money could buy, flown in from all over the world. What he had, even your fancy medical skills couldn’t have fixed. You’re still alive and you need to start fucking acting like it. I’m sorry that letter hurt you, but I’m not sorry Aiden wrote it. He’s right. You need to get your head out of your ass.”

I can feel my anger start to replace my buzz and I clench my hands into fists in my lap. I don’t want to hear this bullshit coming out of his mouth. I know I deserve it, but I don’t want to hear it.

“What the fuck happened to the promise you made me yesterday?” he asks, snatching the water bottle out of my hand and hurling it across the room.

It smacks against our grandmother’s oak curio cabinet filled with her good China and drops to the floor, the last few sips of vodka leaking out onto the hardwood floor.

“It hurts,” I whisper, looking down at my balled fists, unable to look him in the eyes anymore.

“Of course it hurts, you dumbass! It’s called alcohol withdrawals for a reason. It’s not supposed to feel good, but I guess you don’t even want to try,” he fires back.

Jason squats down next to me and grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“I’m sorry Aiden’s gone. I’m sorry you’re hurting and you feel guilty for not being able to save him. But screw you for not even trying. I was too young to remember losing Dad, but watching Mom fade away and drink herself to death was bad enough. You can go fuck yourself if you think you’re going to leave me behind too. If you won’t do it for me, do it for Cameron. She lost Aiden too, you know. What do you think will happen if she loses you as well?”

With that, he gets up and walks away. The angry stomp of his construction boots banging against the hardwood floor makes me drop my head into my hands to stop the damn thing from feeling like it’s going to explode.

I want to go back to the people that need me, but my body won’t let me.

I want to stop hearing Aiden’s voice in my head, but he won’t let me.

I want to drown myself in booze, but my brother won’t let me.

No one will just fucking let me be.

My brother has no idea what he’s talking about. Cameron will be fine without me, just like she’s been for the last four years. She doesn’t need me. She’s never needed me.

Everyone needs to just fucking Let. Me. Be.