Van served as an analyst during her 30-plus-year naval career, retiring as a captain, and holds a master’s from the University of Southern California. She is the inaugural S.C.R.Y. Fellow in Literature (Scry Creative Residencies; scrymagazine.com), exploring literature and intermedia art. This essay was written during the 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Military Veteran Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. It will be included in “Navy Blues,” a collection of personal essays pushing against individual and bureaucratic identities of the post-Vietnam Navy.