A Perilous Looking Back

Why didn’t I become a cop in my early twenties?

It’s a thing people do — writing something personal on New Year’s Eve. It’s as good a time as any, I think, to navel-gaze, to look back, to consider or reconsider. Maybe that’s what this essay is, more than anything; a reconsidering of an event, a time in my life, that I have looked back on many times; a time in my life where I was deeply invested in becoming a police officer.

I’ve written about it, a lot. Most recently here, for instance. And here, too. I’ve talked about it in therapy, I’ve talked about it with my wife and with my friends. I’ve talked about it to former colleagues at the private ambulance company where I was, probably, sublimating (lights-and-sirens, a uniform, a badge, a first responder discount on my AT&T cellphone plan) and at the psychiatric hospital where I worked at later (oh, compared that to being a cop, too — are we getting this yet?).

So, yeah, I’ve gone on and on about this. But there’s the story you tell, that becomes rehearsed and organized in your mind; and you’ve told it so often that it rolls off the tongue without you really having to think about it — you know those stories, don’t you? The story about your marriage, the story about your divorce, the story of what it’s like to have twins. The story of this car or that car. The story that you have to tell and retell and…