So in a nutshell, I’m at my psychiatrists – I’ve gone from hero to zero and today during my “session” about learning how to be a zero (that’s my perception), I was asked what it was like now having to re-define myself. what did I miss about my job? Funny thing was, the first thing I thought about was the office chair races we used to have at 3 am on night shift. Wheeling ourselves frantically up and down the hallway while a skeleton shift jangled its bones of authority at the miscreants in society, ourselves in the watch house excluded, of course. I smiled to myself, thinking of those nutty days which were not so long ago, but were so far out of reach it may as well have happened in the Pleistocene age. Then the loss welled up in me and I realised I would not be having any more office chair races, not at that Police station or any other at any time of the day or night…ever. So my doctor is great and hands me the tissues and asks me what’s happening and I say I can’t let it go. That this is like when those who have lost a limb feel that it is still there, still very much a part of them, Phantom Leg Syndrome – and that I have Phantom Job Syndrome. She laughed and said this was a great analogy and I felt grateful that she understood.

I just wished I could be The Phantom. I didn’t say that bit – I thought we’d end on a good note 😉