So today is thank a Police Officer day (and red panda day). So thank you to all of the officers out there who do good work and your stories are never told or shared. You have a hard, thankless job which people hate you for. Thank you for being stronger than those people and helping others. I want to say thank you to the officers at the PD were I volunteer at. You always make me feel welcome there. I also want to say thank you to my mentor who saved me from a bad relationship.

I met my mentor when he was my teacher at college, teaching criminal justice classes. I’d had him as a teacher for a few years when things had started to turn sour with my boyfriend at the time. My boyfriend at the time had gotten very ill and had turned abusive and violent. He threw me into walls and furniture, or would throw furniture at me. He would hit me where the bruises wouldn’t show unless I wanted them to (mostly torso). He and his brother had gotten good at hiding bruises from their parents, skills that he applied when he would hit me. He’d yell at me over the littlest things. He’d threaten to kill me. “I could kill you and no one would find your body.” He’d whisper that at me when he was really pissed off. I was afraid most of the time, and I was scared to leave him. Leaving him when he was ill seemed like a cowardly move to me at the time. I now know better.

So one day I showed up at class in a baggy t-shirt and jeans, somewhat usual for what I was wearing at the time. But I was moving gingerly for some reason, I don’t remember why. My teacher/mentor noticed the difference in me from the last semester and asked if everything was okay. I lied and said it was, probably said I fell off a horse or something.

The one day weeks later, he called me on it. He’d seen the signs and knew that I was being hurt by my boyfriend. I meekly confessed what was going on and that I was scared to leave, because he was ill. My teacher explained that I needed to get away from him, ill or not. I told him that I had mentally been out of the relationship for almost a year, kind of checking out when the abuse had started.

The teacher gave me some advice on how to get away. How to take care of myself in the situation I was in since I was too scared to just break up with my boyfriend.

I started to spend less time with my boyfriend, or taking my own vehicle whenever we went places in case it went sour. So I wouldn’t have to depend on him for a ride home or anything. I started talking with my teacher a lot during this time, a friendship forming between us. I will make this clear right now, I did not cheat on my boyfriend. I may have thought strongly about it, but I did not do it. My mentor kept asking me how things were going, and if we had broken up yet, I would explain that I hadn’t yet, I was still too scared.

My boyfriend was actually the one to break us up. The one time I had decided to ride with him in his vehicle in months. Over dinner at sushi of all things. He said that he could tell that I was sad and couldn’t figure out why. Then he wanted to grocery shopping afterwards. I asked him to take me to my truck so that I could go home.

It was what I wanted, but it still sucked. He’d beaten me to the punch. I was getting up the bravery of breaking up with him after 7 years. But it worked out better this way. It doesn’t seem like much, what my mentor did for me, but at the time it was a lot. He was someone who could help me. Someone who understood what was happening and going on with me. Helped me with coming up with a plan to get away from him. And our friendship was set.

So thank you for what you did for me close to a little over 7 years ago. I know that things have been rough between us lately, and I know that I have something to do with that, but I still want to say thank you. I do miss you and I do value our friendship.

Anyway, on to today. I worked today at my security job. I managed to get in there without any medication again, 2 for 2! Yay! I spent half of my day outside of the booth, tracking who was coming in and everything. I started tracking how many people wouldn’t stop for me, most of the time noting that it was residents. I stopped keeping track a little over half way into my day, I’m not really sure why. I did move inside of the booth for lunch though.

I also started the day off with some back pain. I did sleep on the sofa last night, so I was attributing the pain to the sofa, but it slowly grew worse and worse though out the day. By the end of my shift the only position I was mostly comfortable in was sitting, which did me no good at my job. I didn’t want to spend my day sitting. I did stand for another hour or so, checking people in again. When I didn’t have to check people in I did some stretching and some walking, but it didn’t seem to relive the pain.

After I got done with work I met up with my boyfriend and one of our friends at Wavehaven. Everyone else had left for the day, but they were still there talking when I showed up. Our friend was hungry so we went to a local burger joint and got some food. Well, do shakes & malts count as food? We did steal some of the French fries from our friends. They mostly talked amtgard stuff and I listened. We have a few things coming up within the next couple of weeks. We have Feast of Mars in 2 weeks, and then we have crown qualls at our local park 2 weekends after that. My boyfriend is helping with both of those so they were busy sorting out the details. Feast of Mars is the only camping one though.

He is currently doing an amtgard meeting while I sit on the sofa while typing this and watching The Hobbit. It was either that or Inside Out. Both good movies in their own rights. I’m going to take it easy for the rest of the night and hope that my back fixes itself with the relaxation.

That’s it for the day.

Just keep swimming!