The Prison Officer’s Goodbye – A Reflection on Service, Scars, and Self-Worth

Retirement for a prison officer is not like it is for most professions. There is no grand farewell, no golden handshake that truly acknowledges the years spent in a world where violence and despair are part of the daily air you breathe. Instead, there is silence. A quiet shuffling to the side, while the next recruit steps forward to take your place.

The Prison Officer’s Goodbye – A Reflection on Service, Scars, and Self-WorthIt is a peculiar feeling, this sense of being forgotten. We gave years—decades, even—of our lives to a system that spoke endlessly about discipline, loyalty, and duty, but offered little in return. We kept order in chaos, bore witness to society’s darkest corners, and carried those shadows home in our minds and bodies. We survived shifts where threats were whispered with the same casualness as breathing. We endured the weight of a system that never really saw us as people, only as instruments to keep the machine running.

Then one day, the machine no longer needs us...

To expect recognition from such a system is a trap—an echo of the very controlling relationship the job represented. For years we were conditioned to serve, to sacrifice, to stay silent. To look now for gratitude is to forget that the institution was never built to nurture us, only to use us. Like a toxic partner, it demanded everything while giving nothing but scars in return.

The Prison Officer’s Goodbye – A Reflection on Service, Scars, and Self-Worth

We leave with bodies worn down and minds marked by the trauma of bearing witness to too much. Our loyalty, our discipline, our sacrifices—they vanish into the bureaucratic void. Another name on a roster, another uniform in storage, another recruit to step into the cycle.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with the only recognition that ever truly mattered: our own. The respect we hold for ourselves. The quiet dignity of knowing we endured what others could not. The resilience that kept us upright through storms that would have broken many.

The system may cast us aside, but it cannot take away the meaning we choose to give our own story. And perhaps that is the final liberation: to walk away without waiting for applause, without craving their approval. To finally stop asking for validation from the very structure that wounded us.

Because in the end, the truth is this: our loyalty and our respect must be reserved for ourselves. The institution will forget us. The scars will remain. But the strength, the dignity, and the self-worth—that is ours to carry forward.

So let the system move on. Let them slot in the next recruit. Let them pretend we never mattered.