I hope you never have to experience what it’s like to watch the person you love most walk out the door and wonder if they will return.
I hope you never have to experience the fear that crosses your mind in the middle of the night as you wonder what kind of terror the person you love most is dealing with at that very second.
I hope you never have to send the person you love most out to defend our city against people who hate them for a crime they feel just as angry about.
I hope you never have to experience the feeling of seeing the person you love most get rocks, bricks, fire, broken glass bottles, etc. thrown at them on a live video stream.
I hope you never have to experience the broken heart as you hold the person you love most as they find out their brother or sister in blue has just been shot.
I hope you never have to experience the feeling of listening to the horrific acts a person committed on their precious child.
I hope you never have to experience the amount of times we have come across a post about a group of people wanting the person we love most dead.
I hope you never have to experience being glued to your phones “Find my Friends” app watching their every move as if it’ll give us a hint of their safety.
I hope you never have to experience the things we go through every. single. day.
The tears are real and deep. The pain that we feel watching the live the video streams and reading the posts and comments hating the person we love most is beyond anything we can describe. We live in a time where it’s so difficult to stay off social media, but in times like these it’s the thing we need to do most in order to obtain even a sliver of sanity. We have not been through one day of training, there is no “police spouse academy” to help us learn how to cope. We haven’t gone to classes to learn the proper way to handle any of this. As police spouses we are going in blind and having to figure all of this out while seeing our “friends” tear our loved ones down piece by piece, people that have no clue about what really goes on in a police officers life and honestly have no interest in learning about it either. Our officers can take off the physical target, -the uniform, the badge- but there will never be enough power strong enough to remove the emotional target they will always wear.
Once you see the evil in this world, there is no escaping it. Our officers see so much pain and heartache and they often witness peoples “worst day”. Imagine dealing with that everyday and not being able to unsee the terror you have seen. The current events that have taken place are sad and disheartening, it’s taken such an emotional toll on our officers and I can’t help but be angry.
I’m angry that our officers are getting ridiculed for a crime they didn’t commit, I’m angry that our officers have to go out each day and put their life on the line only to get f-bombed and spat on, and I’m angry that this world doesn’t see the value in our men and women in law enforcement. When I see a post or a comment saying “defund the police” I can’t help but take it personal. I know the man that comes home to me each day is a good one. He has story after story of him changing peoples lives each and every day. I know my officer is out there to help make his city a better place and I know he would put his life on the line to save another.
Being a police officer means dealing with horrific acts so we can live a sheltered life, it means long hours, short vacations, missed holidays, mediocre pay, constant heartbreak, and a target on your back. As a police spouse- we can only hope to be the light in their life to help them cope. Our officers are human and society expects them to be perfect. Unfortunately - human and perfect just don’t go together. They do their best to protect and serve and 99.9% of them do a pretty great job at it.