SEEMS LIKE JUST ANOTHER DAY TO ME.

December 25, 2006

I wrote this Christmas night, 2006, from the front seat of the rig, parked outside a Denny’s that was pretending to be festive. Inside, families in wrinkled sweaters poked at dry turkey plates under fluorescent lights. Outside, the city felt hollowed out. Like it was holding its breath, waiting for the holidays to pass.

We’d been running low-acuity calls all day. Welfare checks, anxiety attacks, a couple of folks trying to stretch out their pain long enough to score a warm bed in the ER. No trauma. No drama. Just a slow, steady drain.

There was something eerie about how normal it all felt.

For everyone else, it was Christmas. For me, it was Monday.

I wasn’t angry about it. I wasn’t sad. I was just… disconnected. You reach a point in this job where even the holidays don’t hit the same. You see too much. You know what’s coming. You know how many people out there are just trying to survive the day.

So I put a post up. Nothing fancy. No moral. No punchline. Just a few lines to mark the day. Not because I had something to say—but because I didn’t. Because the silence felt heavier than usual, and writing it down made it feel a little less lonely.

It was Christmas.

And I was working.

And it felt like just another day to me.