They Were Wearing My Badge and It Broke Me...

A Valentine’s date to the local sportsman show took an unexpected turn when I rounded a corner and found my old police department at a booth. Handshakes, hugs, and shared jokes felt like time travel—then the flood hit. I left smiling and walked away shaken, second-guessing, and grieving a version of myself I’d buried under “I’m fine.”

This episode is a raw, thoughtful walk through identity, tribe, and the nervous system’s need for safety. I talk about what I truly miss—the people, the mission, the shorthand—not the grind or the weight of the badge. We unpack why numbness can be a protective reflex, how grief signals that our past mattered, and why nostalgia isn’t failure but unfinished business. If you’ve left a uniform, a startup, a stage, or any high-identity role, you’ll recognize the tug-of-war between who you were and who you’re building now.

From therapy notes to prayer and small group support, I share tools that helped me translate old strengths—structure, purpose, recognition—into a new life with slower wins and deeper presence. We explore choosing rooms rather than needing to run them, measuring impact by trust instead of urgency, and building belonging intentionally. The goal isn’t to recreate yesterday; it’s to carry forward its best parts without getting trapped in them. I offer questions to help you spot where old measures of worth still rule your day and how to integrate them without looking back like Uncle Rico.

If this story opens something in you or sheds light on someone you love, lean in. Hit play, share it with a friend who might need it, and tell me: what part of your past still fits, and what are you tailoring for your future? Subscribe, leave a review, and join the conversation so we can build this new room together.

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Transcript

Running Into The Old Department

The Emotional Whiplash

Numbness As Protection

Missing Tribe Not The Job

Burying The Past And Closure

Questions For Listeners

Naming Grief And Growth

Building A New Identity

Choosing The New Room

Holding Hope And Asking For Prayer

Final Reflections And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast. My name is Aaron. I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back and sharing this week with me. On tonight's this week's episode, I want to talk about walking into my old life. I want to talk about an incident that occurred. See, this weekend, Valentine's Day, I really wanted a sweet way to show my wife that I loved her because I'm a romantic, caring kind of guy. So I took her to the local sportsman show. And there we walked around and in awe, we looked at guns and hunting trips and fishing trips and all of those things. But when I rounded a corner, I saw a booth, and that booth was from my old police department. And inside the booth were five police officers that I worked with my entire career at my police agency. Out of those, two of them were former detectives with me. The other three was my sergeant and two patrol officers who I spent a considerable amount of time working with. We've shared in holidays together. We have broke bread together. We have relationships. I know their families. And when I came around that corner, it's the first time that I had seen these people in three years. It's the first time that I had seen them since I left the police department. And immediately I was excited. I actually detoured when I saw their booth to make a beeline to go say hello to them. I handshook everybody, gave everybody hugs. We were smiling, we were laughing, we were catching up. I immediately felt at home in that booth. When I looked down, I saw that they had their badges on their waist, and I could almost feel the badge on mine. They had their investigation shirts on, they had their guns. Literally, it's like I time traveled back three years ago. I was excited and happy to see them. We spoke for a few minutes, we gave hugs, and we moved on. And as I walked away, my wife asked me, she said, How are you feeling? And I said, like every other guy, I said, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm good. But inside I wasn't. Inside I was tore up. I was sad. I was confused. I felt lost. I second guessed my decision to leave. There was a ginormous lump in my throat and tears in my eyes that I could feel in just utter pain. My heart hurt. Inside, I felt like I had reverted right back to the day that I left the police department. It was the same feelings when I walked out to my car that day and got in my car and cried for an hour in the parking lot. I was having those same feelings. I had an emotional flood overcome me. And it lasted for several days. That flood led to crying, uncontrollable, shaking at times, and just a complete sense of confusion as to what was I doing. I felt like I had left my tribe. I felt like I was, I belonged in that booth. I felt like I was valuable. In that three minutes, five minutes that I was in that booth, I could have stepped right back into my role. And it picked up like I never left. We shared a language, we shared a mission, we shared an edge, we shared humor, we shared shorthand communication. At one point, the badge they were wearing and the uniform they were wearing regulated my nervous system. I knew exactly who I was in that moment. And the moment I stepped into that booth, I was I was a detective again. I was one of them. I was excited to see my old friends. But quickly after leaving the booth, that was layered with grief and longing and confusion. I was asking myself why I left. I second guessed, why did I leave? I couldn't even see in those moments what what I was building and what the future held for me and my new life. All I could think about was backwards. After several days of crying and the lump in my throat and the processing, I went numb. And by numb, I mean I couldn't recall the feelings that I had the day before. And I couldn't access them. I couldn't get a grip on them. And that is normal for me. That is my protective mechanism. That's the protective wiring that saved me for years. For years, I would have an exposure, a flood of emotion, and then I would go numb. And that is what allowed me to work so long and do what I did for so long. And what we all do in law enforcement for so long. That protective mechanism shut me down when my emotions were too intense. The nice thing about it is there's been growth. And I'm telling you guys all this because there are people out there, men and women alike, who have left careers, who have left brotherhoods, sisterhoods, uniforms, high-functioning organizations that became your identity, and one day you're gonna walk away. And when you re-encounter them, in my case, after three years, it is very possible that you can feel like you're gonna jump right back in to where you left off. I can't be the only one feeling this way. It's impossible. Military, everybody else has got to feel something similar. I felt weak. I told my wife, I said, I feel weak. I feel weak for not being strong enough to handle these emotions. I feel weak for being injured to the point where I had to leave. How come those people can still do it, but I can't? And here I am doing something completely different that doesn't have the impact that I once had. They were wearing my badge. That badge represented to me tribe, validation, unity, impact, belongings. It was an immediate relevance for who I was, and I knew who I was wearing that badge. I could literally feel the badge on my belt that day standing in that booth at the sportsman show. My internals, my body, my mind, it time traveled back three, four years, and that's the world that I knew. If they would have said to me, Aaron, we miss you, come back, I would have had an immediate flood of emotions, tears, and I would have been uncontrollable. It tells me that I I missed those people, I missed those connections, I miss all those things that badge represents. I don't miss the job. I don't miss the weight of the badge. I don't miss I miss helping people in that way, but I don't miss all the crap that comes with it. I don't miss all the negative that is surrounded in that function. I don't miss any of that. I'm so blessed and be thankful to be where I am, but I miss the interpersonal unity that came with the position. Maybe somebody out there can relate to this. Maybe a loved one that somebody listening to this knows, your husband, your wife, your father, your uncle, they go through these times of these identity issues. Maybe you can't relate, but maybe now it's opened your eyes and you can see it in somebody else. Anytime you have to leave a brotherhood, it leaves a significant psychological and emotional imprint on you. And the re-exposure can bring you right back when that brotherhood you knew better than your own family or your outside life. That's what I experienced. I didn't want my old life back. But I have been pretending for so long that that version of my life didn't exist. I don't have the I love me's on the wall. I don't have the awards or the plaques or the badges or the pins displayed for people to see. I have pretended that part of me didn't exist, and that was an easy way for me to cope with my emotions and to pretend that something doesn't exist. That in itself is an easy way for me to bury this stuff in my backyard and just pretend that it doesn't exist. All this did was God was unpacking a box from my backyard. He brought it to the surface, and now I have to deal with it. I don't want to go back, but I also don't want to feel this pain, and I feel like I didn't have complete closure on my old life because I buried it in the backyard. I don't want to erase this chapter of my life. There's a lot of positivity and a lot of good things in this chapter of my life that I need to hold solid and needs to be concrete because that made me who I am today. Belonging, I have a primal need to belong to an organization or a group or a tribe. I don't have that right now. And I don't have it not because it's not available to me, but because I'm so caught up in my past that I can't truly accept and open my arms for the future. In my old world, and I've said this before, there was tangible, immediate proof that what I did mattered. In this one, it's smaller, simple, subtle steps that ultimately lead me to success. It's these things, this identity certainty, a clear role, structure, recognition. It's these things that I want to bring into my new life. I want to integrate those in my day-to-day. I think that will give me meaning, purpose, and belonging, but I don't want to be trapped with the memories of trying to recreate a yesterday. And sometimes we do that. Sometimes you've got Uncle Rico that can throw the football, whatever his name was, on that stupid movie Napoleon Dynamite. He can throw the, you know, the that the football over those mountains. We relive our old and we always try to bring things back and recreate the past, and I don't want to do that. This weekend's experience has sucked. The pain has been deep, but it has opened my eyes to why I've prayed a lot about what I went through and what I experienced. I've prayed a lot for clarity. I've asked my small group to pray for clarity as to why I feel this way. Open up that confusion and allow me just to process, have closure, remember my past, but not live in it, and move on to my brighter future. I don't need my old life back to know that I belong. I just need to carry that understanding forward with me into the new rooms that I walk into, the new version of myself that I'm creating, who I'm becoming. What part, and I again I can't be the only one that feels this way. What in your life, right? I don't think God gave me my pain without a purpose. And you're listening at 13, 14 minutes into this because something is resonating with you. Where in your life are you carrying old identity and measures of worth? And how can you integrate those into your daily life now without being trapped by them, without being looking backwards, without being Uncle Rico? When I go back and think about this last weekend and I dig into my toolbox of stuff that I've learned through therapy and counseling and friends and my wife and my family and everybody else, here's what I'm coming up with. And I'm going to tell you guys these things because I believe that somebody needs to hear them. And as men, we don't talk about these things enough. We don't talk about the vulnerable side of life and what maybe some of these things mean when we when we feel them. When I ran into my people, like I said a moment ago, I didn't just run into my old five coworkers. I ran into my old world. I ran into the former version of myself that I lost. If you listen to last week's episode, it's how I started the show. You don't just lose your identity, you lose the version of yourself that you know. And of course, my body reacted to that. I saw that as weakness. I felt it as weakness. It wasn't weakness, it was an attachment to my old world. When I saw them, I experienced excitement and pride and familiarity and belonging. Then when I walked away, I had grief and disorientation. My identity was like playing a game of tug-of-war between then and now. I second guessed my decision to leave the police department and to take care of myself. I completely forgot about all the positive things that have come from the time that I left the police department. Those weren't even in my mind. I walked away with that lump in my throat. That is more unresolved attachment. That is energy inside of me that is trying to get out. I said it a moment ago, they're wearing my badge. The badge wasn't just a job, it was everything that I knew. I didn't just leave my employment, I left the brotherhood. When I saw them, my nervous system realigned to what it knew best, and that was purpose, safety, hierarchy, friends, value. That is why this hurt so much. When I felt like I went back to the day that I left, I saw that as regression. It's not regression. It's the unprocessed part of my life that I haven't allowed myself to deal with. It's all of my memories and memoirs that I packed into a box and buried in the backyard that is resurfacing. It means my healing isn't over. I still have a part of me as that 40-something-year-old detective that hasn't said goodbye. I've been crying for days, including the first 15 minutes of this episode. That's grief. It's not weakness. Thank God I take notes when I go to therapy. It's grief for who I was, what I had, what I meant, and the cost of leaving it all. It doesn't mean that I made the wrong decision. Grief doesn't mean that when I'm second guessing what I did, it doesn't mean I made the wrong decision. It means that whatever I had before mattered to me in a real way. I'm thankful that I can identify that numbness. When I feel the big emotion, I have a flood of emotion, I shut down and go neutral. I'm thankful that I can recognize that. Before I lived that way for so many years, which allowed my nervous system to get so dysregulated. It tells me that I've grown. It tells me that I have a new life ahead of me. It tells me that I am blessed to be where I am today and to have those people in my world that have helped me get to this stage. It's the transition part that I'm in right now. It's the finding the new me that I spoke about last week. I can grow, I can evolve, and I can build something new that is just as meaningful, impactful, and powerful in my world as my days of yesterday. I should be able to at some point reintegrate with those people and not have the flood of emotions that I had because I'm secure in my new identity and the new me. Speaking of the new me, I'm recording this from beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. I am blessed. This new role, I get to do a lot of fun, fun things. And this week I'm down here in Phoenix, Arizona, attending some meetings and going to opening day of the Sloan Park, the Chicago Cubs Training, Spring Training Center here. It's not just a catchy name. Sloan is one of the factories we represent. So everybody's everybody is here. There's a big tailgate party and it's a lot of fun, live music. You know, that that new part of me says that when I walk into a room, I no longer have to be the most important thing. It says to me that I no longer have to be Mr. Know It All. I have to identify the relationships that I can build, the value that I can add, the strength that I can bring, and just be subtle. When I'm sitting at a company dinner, I don't need to be the one in charge of the conversation. I can just sit back, listen, observe, absorb, and think of just one question to take the conversation a little bit deeper. And that is how I will build these new relationships. That is how I will find identity. And I don't want identity, but that's how I will find myself in my new role. My previous part of me, my previous version of me needed to matter, it needed to perform, it needed to be impressive, it needed to be validated every time I stepped up. I needed an attaboy. The new version of me that I'm slowly fading into. And even with all the confusion, I know that I'm in it. I'm right, I'm standing full, I'm committed fully into this bucket of suds here that I'm standing in. And that bucket of suds says, I don't need the room. I chose to be there. I chose to step into it. And when you choose something, you have so much more power over it. And that is where I'm at today. I choose to be involved in these spring training trips and these fishing trips and hunting trips and wine tasting and the relationship building. That is literally my job. To the layperson, they would say, Man, I just want to get paid to do what you do. And obviously there's more to it than that. But to me, sometimes I get so confused I lose sight of the blessings that God has given me. I'm looking forward to the future. I'm looking forward to what life has to offer. I'm looking forward to getting back in front of my therapist and to having this conversation and discussing these things and without being prideful, validating the tools in the toolbox that I've that I've come up with. I don't have this figured out, kind of like a lot of things on this podcast. I don't know what I'm doing all the time. It's not a trauma dump. I'm excited. I'm excited for the future. But it is walking the road of life. And when they were wearing my badge, it really hit me hard. I am blessed. I can't wait to get outside and get some of that sunny weather. You guys, pray for me. I love you. I thank you for listening to this podcast. Hopefully, something I've said can resonate with you. Hopefully, something I've said can open your eyes to maybe what one of your people or peers are going through. We know that I'm not gonna belabor it, but we know that suicide is a thing. We know that depression's a thing. Maybe this will help you communicate or connect a little bit deeper or understand maybe what somebody else is going through. At the end of the day, we don't know what the people around us are truly going through because more times than not, they won't let us see it. As humans, we hide behind a mask, we pretend pain doesn't exist, and we all put on a Facebook profile to make ourselves look like the best version that we are truly not. Ladies and gentlemen, I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting the show.