OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #5

Who are you when the lanyard comes off?

When removal feels like relief and loss

Knowing you’re not putting on the uniform or epaulettes anymore is both liberating and soul destroying at the same time.

I had spent parts of my career in covert roles, where anonymity was normal, but the warrant card was always in my pocket. The identity never really left. Even when unseen, it was present.

Taking that away creates a strange vacuum.

There is a sickening question that creeps in quietly.

Who am I beyond the uniform?

For much of my early career, the answer had been simple. I was the source of stories. At family gatherings, conversations revolved around work. The latest job. The latest incident. The latest scrape I could safely talk about. As if nothing else of significance existed outside that frame.

I didn’t question it at the time. It felt normal.

When another identity begins to surface

In 2022, when I trekked to Everest Base Camp with my son, something shifted.

Even though I spent large parts of the trek talking about policing with the Americans linked to policing in the group, I felt the presence of another identity forming. A quieter one. One that wasn’t dependent on the job for substance.

Looking back, I realised that by the time I put the kit away in December 2025, I already had two identities.

That process had started years earlier. Loosely in 2014 when I published my first book, but more meaningfully in 2019 when my autism diagnosis entered the picture. From that point on, Police Gav and Personal Gav existed as two distinct versions of me.

They were very different people.

When separation turns into integration

Ironically, the thing that had once required separation eventually allowed integration.

My author pseudonym had to remain separate as part of a business interest application, and I took that division very literally. But when I began sharing lived experience from a neurodivergent perspective, the two versions started to overlap.

I was allowed to mix them.

When I eventually made the conscious decision to explore life outside policing, my fear of who I would be without the uniform was less intense than I expected. Not absent, but quieter.

That didn’t mean it didn’t sting.

Putting the uniform away still felt like a funeral of sorts. Laying something to rest that had mattered deeply. I questioned myself more than once. I questioned my worth. I questioned whether I had wasted time.

The answers didn’t come immediately.

Being unmarked in the world

One of the strangest moments came not with a dramatic ending, but with a realisation.

I attended a film screening in London in March 2025 after a chance connection with the director of my short film. The only reason that connection existed was because he had read one of my short stories and reached out for advice about neurodiversity.

That evening, I spent hours talking about creativity.

I never once mentioned policing.

That was unheard of for me.

It was the first time I noticed that Gav existed publicly outside the role. Fully. Comfortably. Without explanation.

In hindsight, I had already transitioned long before I realised.

Honouring what was, without living inside it

Doubt didn’t disappear. It still doesn’t.

Even as Chief Firearms Instructor, Inspector Gavin Skevington, collar 3071 became a memory, I knew I didn’t want to erase that part of my life. Twenty years don’t vanish simply because the final chapter was difficult.

I promised myself I would honour it properly.

I’m now building a memory display at home. Epaulettes. Lanyards. Photographs. Medals. Instead of boxing it all up and putting it in the attic, I want it visible. Not as nostalgia, but as acknowledgment.

It’s still a work in progress. I need to get it right.

What remains unanswered

Do I know what happens next?Not really.

Policing offered certainty. Thirty years and you were done. This life doesn’t.

I have moved into a role with a reputable organisation, deeply established, with history older than my own. That provides structure. But creatively, the future is far less defined.

And for the first time, that feels acceptable.

The lanyard is gone.

The identity hasn’t been replaced.

It’s simply no longer the only thing holding everything together.

The real question is this: if the role fell away tomorrow, what would still remain of you?