My room was decorated with metals he never let me touch. I ironed his dress uniforms growing up, memorized every regulation before I was sixteen. But the moment I told him I’d applied to Annapolis, he didn’t speak to me for a year. The silence was louder than anything he could have said. When I was accepted, he dropped a manila folder on my bed — inside, applications to law schools, nursing programs, teaching positions. Not a single one with an anchor on the seal.

At the Naval Academy, I learned fast that being a woman in uniform meant walking a razor’s edge twice as sharp, half as fair. I worked harder, studied longer, endured more. But I earned every bar. I rose through the ranks one steel moment at a time. And each time I was promoted, I called him. He never answered. Eventually, I stopped dialing, but the silence still spoke.

Fast forward to the morning of my wedding. I wasn’t nervous. I’d stood on foreign soil with mortars falling around me. This — this was just a ceremony. But the uniform, the one I wore that day, wasn’t a statement. It was a truth. My fiancée James was a civilian — quiet, intelligent, grounded. He once told me, “You in uniform is the most honest thing I’ve ever seen. Why would I want you in anything else?” So, I wore white — just not his version of it.