EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

A Life Without Sirens And The Silence That Follows Them

April 20, 2026—Middletown Springs, Vermont (Home)

Amelia asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said something that I knew would be exceedingly unlikely, bordering on impossible without even blinking, just to see her reaction. Coming from me, it was like it was the most sarcastic yet totally anticipated answer in the world. I don't ask for much—my requests are simple, and belong in the same category as cake and a card left on the kitchen counter. Card is optional. Cake presence is not negotiable. Skip the candles.

I told her I wanted to transition back into civilian life, to live as a regular woman for once in my adult life. It just sat there between us, heavy and honest. I've been thinking about that answer for awhile now. The way the words just trespassed on my lips without hesitation is the part that won't leave me alone.

It wasn't a joke. It wasn't exaggerated. It wasn't even dressed up. It was the simplest, most accurate sentence I've said in a long time, and it felt almost out of place in my own mouth, like I wasn't used to asking for something that didn't involve solving a problem or carrying something or getting someone else through a moment they couldn't otherwise survive on their own.

Civilian life. The phrase itself feels strange when I write it down. Too clean. Too organized. Too predictable. It almost assumes there's a version of me that hasn't already been shaped by everything that came before it. I don't think I want a new life, I think I simply want a quieter one.

I want the kind of morning where nothing is waiting for me except my morning coffee, maybe the radio low in the background, the same way it's always been, something steady and predictable that doesn't ask anything from me.

I've spent so much of my life being the person who shows up when everything else has already fallen apart that I don't know what it means to show up for social gatherings when nothing is broken. It's repetition combined with muscle memory that doesn't shut off just because the environment changes.

My body still expects the call, the shift, the moment where everything narrows and I have to make it happen. Out of habit, whenever I'm out to dinner with my friends, I ask to sit against the perimeter with a good view of the front door. I scan for exits before I sit down.

There's something almost disorienting about wanting peace after a lifetime of intensity. It doesn't feel natural at first. And then there's the other part—the quieter one—that given enough time away from intensity, you start to notice the way the sunlight moves across the floor in the late afternoon, the way the wind moves through the trees like it has somewhere to be, the way the crickets chirp at night when everything finally stops pretending it's holding itself up for someone else. I don't need much. I never did. I just never got to be the priority until now.