Protecting Miss Dawes - a job like any other

Chapter 4: Charles

The reason why I usually returned from work to an empty home, was my own doing, even if at least to some part involuntary. Or home - it was a flat, the place where I cooked for myself, watched some telly, slept, but I think it takes something more to define a place like a home.

Me, Rebecca and Sam once had a home, until my PTSD screwed things up. I somehow had the naïve thought that I was immune to that shit, that I was able to distance myself from the things I experienced on tour so that they would not affect me deeply, but they did. Gradually, more and more. The emotional distance itself turned out to be part of the problem. Shutting off my emotions when I was in service might initially have been a good idea, but eventually it made me shut them off all the time. Or bury them. It made me numb, careless, unloving. When I finally could not help feelings bubbling up from where they had been repressed deep inside me, they came out as anger, wrath, desperation – even violence. Not ever hurting any person physically, but I had tantrums and on more than one occasion threw things around me, like a bottle of beer that I crashed into pieces against a wall and the beer poured down the wall like a sad brown waterfall, making Rebecca look at me like I was insane. So first, I made sure Rebecca had no reason to love me anymore, then I scared her off with my foul temperament and one day I woke up to a wife filing for divorce and asking for full custody of our son, and my career dangling on a thin thread because I risked being declared unfit for service. That was when I finally realised it was time to get counselling and to leave the army. Scrape up the remainders of my life and try to make something good of it again.

It was strange, we had many fights before, especially where I yelled at her, but when she left it was without a bang. She just told me she had had enough, that she did not love me anymore and did not feel safe for her or Sam in my presence, and I sadly realised she was right and let her go without protest. I did not fight for her. I did not miss her, but I missed him immensely and that was when it hit me I had royally fucked up and had to get a grip of my life. It took time though, hours and hours of seeing a therapist, even more time doing my own soul searching and connect to my true feelings again and deal with them, admit that I was damaged goods who needed healing. Rebecka never cut me off from Sam entirely, but during the first year after the divorce I only met him together with her, in public places. When my condition improved, she finally let him come and stay with me for weekends or go with me and visit my parents. That was how still things were. It was a step in the right direction and being with him made me immensely happy. It was the only thing that really meant something. Rebecka and I had a polite truce where we both wanted what was best for Sam, but I did not want her back and she definitely did not want me, so we mutually agreed on never trying that path without even having to talk about it. One day I might look for someone else, but I had not been ready to yet even though I was feeling fine now. My goal was to have a good relationship with Sam, be a good father that he would have contact with and maybe even look up to. That was all that mattered to me.

Beside the therapy, leaving the army had been a step on my journey to get well. I was done with it, I wanted to be close to Sam, so despite that I was proud of the work I had done there I was not sad to leave. Through an ex-colleague, I was tipped off about the possibility to change career and join a special branch of the police which focused on protection of VIPs, like politicians and the royal family. I thought it seemed like a job that would be as good as any other and so I ended up as a Special Protection Officer. I quite liked the job. Liked the colleagues, found the clients interesting. The things I got to hear because everyone thinks of the bodyguard as part of the furniture. Some of those guys in power are seriously fucked up with huge egos and a desire for power rather than a wish to do what is good for the people. There was the other kind too, the ones who never put themselves first and those I admired greatly. I still had to find out which type the Home Secretary was. A few weeks in on the job I had not figured out her character yet, but I found her intriguing.