It would be hard to overstate the significance the Marine Corps played in my family’s life. My father, Robert Starke, grew up in a small town in Eastern Oregon, enlisted in 1988 when he was 17 years old and went off to training at 18. My mother, Cindy, always says that the man who went to boot camp was not the same one who came back. The corps hardened him and shaped his ideas about raising a family. He and my mother married on Christmas Day that year, during his holiday leave following Marine Combat Training. She was still in high school. After her graduation the following spring, she joined him in Georgia, where he worked as a computer operator on a logistics base. My mother gave birth to a son and then to me — both before she could legally buy a drink.

My brother, James, and I were raised in my father’s interpretation of the corps’ intense ethos. We grew up believing that standing at attention, yelling cadence on runs to our activities after school and listening to lectures about honor, courage and commitment were norms in every household. In 1996, my father was medically discharged, after suffering a botched foot surgery while he was a sergeant in Okinawa. His reliance on the corps to define his identity only grew stronger. I would catch him wearing an old Marine Corps cap to his civilian job, or a flashy T-shirt adorned with skulls, crossbones and a pithy quote from an iconic Marine. For years he downplayed his disability and refused to submit a claim with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He worked in law enforcement and as a karate instructor and joined an ironworkers union — all while trying to convince the corps to allow him into the reserves.

[Sign up for the weekly At War newsletter to receive stories about duty, conflict and consequence.]

He finally gave up in 2009, when I told him I had decided to enlist. If he couldn’t be back in the corps, at least I was going to be. On that day he declared me “the son he never had.” His joke fell flat, particularly for my brother, but it was painfully symbolic of his desire to remain connected to the service that had forced him out. I left for boot camp in August 2010 at 18, and returned home three months later on leave to the Marine Corps hymn blasting loudly down our suburban street and a giant banner: “Welcome Home Pvt Starke Platoon 4035.” My father viewed my enlistment as nothing but a good thing. In time, though, he and I found that my decision to follow him into the service forced us to confront sides of the military neither of us wanted to see. My enlistment became a bond and a wedge between us, and eventually forced us on a journey toward truth.

A few months after I graduated from Marine Combat Training, a vengeful ex-boyfriend who had also gone into the corps sent a half-nude photo of me to fellow Marines in Pensacola, Fla., along with a text message that read: “This woman cheated on her husband while he was deployed to Afghanistan, make her famous boys.” Everything the text said about me was a lie. I had never cheated, he wasn’t my husband, and he had not yet even finished training, much less been to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the text spread like fire, warping fraternal camaraderie into vulgar abuse that masked misogyny as patriotism. This was my awakening: My experience as a Marine would be very different from my father’s.