Vachon Imagined

The day she laid down her badge, she had been facing a tyranny of fear and an incredible fatigue.

The fighting for other people. The drive toward power. The need to hold the cloth, the uniform, the entitlement.

It felt so good.

Prove to the world I matter.

Run towards it like the proverbial hill they told her to charge.

Fight, prove, become.

Let them see my badge.

The credential of my authority.

“Don’t question my authority.”

A phrase used by the most arrogant of police officers.

But more and more, her authority was being questioned.

And underneath that was another question, one she could no longer outrun:

Did she actually have control over her own life?

The answer was becoming harder to justify with every passing day.

As the silver began to melt away from her badge, something else began to chip away with it—the armor.

She grew tired of what the world worshipped.

Power.

Credentials.

Authority.

The endless drive to get up and make it happen.

The positivity.

The affirmations.

The constant insistence that she could do anything if she just pushed a little harder.

Eventually, even that took its toll.

She didn’t want to fight anymore.

She wanted to relax.

To be taken care of.

To stop proving.

So she walked away.

She laid down her badge.

Her armor.

And she rested.

Every time she thought about picking it back up again, another fight, another criminal to stop, another battle waiting for her, she paused.

No.

Not today.

I won’t live in this fear.

I won’t live in this attachment.

I will give it up.

And everyone looked at her as though she had lost her mind.

How could she do that?

After all those years?

After everything she had worked for?

After everything she had done to become someone?

The desk sergeant watched her walk away in disbelief.

Her badge.

Her credentials.

Her weaponry of every kind.

She left them on the desk.

His mouth dropped open.

But in their horror, in their disbelief, and sometimes even in her own, she knew why.

She always had.

She had simply spent years forgetting.

She wasn’t walking away from who she was.

She was walking away from everything she had been using to prove it.