There comes a point during life as a paramedic where the skillset becomes almost unconsciously automatic and it frees up more of your mind to notice the circumstances and surroundings that have led up to your presence, such as you having to attempt resuscitation on a living room floor while a distraught shocked family looks on, the christmas tree and decorations adding a happy veneer to a tragic base. The hissing oxygen and monitor voice prompts do little to dissuade the current contribution to the slow change occuring deep within you. What you see as common and what’s common overall are confusing each other. That evening you’re sitting at home being your drunk self again and in the midst of working on your alcohol hobby you realize you’re putting on the phony performance for your kids just like your parents did for you. You fully understand though. You go through the motions but feel none of the joy because of what the holidays have come to mean to you. Bringing your kids a little bit of happiness is supposed to bring you some too, but it doesn’t in the drugged emotional vacuum you reside in. It feels shameful to not react and feel properly and you become increasingly disgusted with yourself. Convinced everyone will see you as an ungrateful incompetent crazy freak if you share any of this you tip the glass some more. How broken are you? How long has it been since you could do and feel normal human things anyway? Worthless. Are you even still human?

This year I’m going to try to focus more on the gift of the good. Happiness is not disrespect for tragedy. Sure people die tragically and harm and kill themselves and each other, even around holidays. But that’s not predominance. My first christmas memory is playing with a toy jeep at an aunt and uncle’s house. My mother was in the hospital dying of cancer. I know the rest of my family were there but in the memory I feel alone. Makes sense since none of them would have actually been emotionally present. That doesn’t mean those are the only feelings I’ll have if I open the door to having them. I can be grateful for that aunt and uncle giving us a christmas that year. Happiness comes with the other feelings. Package deal. Maybe I’ll be sad or angry some of the time but I know I’ll also get to be happy again too. Holidays aren’t just about dying mothers, VSAs, overdoses and psychiatric crises. PTSD has tried to convince me otherwise but I have the choice to make them about so much more than that.