Vachon Imagined

Not everyone who runs toward the fire is courageous.

Sometimes it’s simply where they know how to exist.

It’s not I feel chaos.

It’s I am the chaos.

Not I must escape the chaos.

I must add to it.

I learned a lot about this working for the United States Army and the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division.

I came into CID in 2007 as a criminal intelligence analyst. My job was to decipher patterns and give leaders answers.

Before that, I had been a cryptographer in the Army, working in counterterrorism and deciphering messages from satellites—some of which I actually got to see being built, which remains one of the coolest experiences of my life.

I worked with engineers of all kinds, translating mechanics into language that operators could use to solve problems, create wars, and win them.

I loved being a Soldier.

That doesn’t mean I loved all of it.

I didn’t always love being in the dirt, being screamed at, or living in buildings that were somehow still considered good enough for government work.

But I met some of the greatest people I have ever known.

I also met some of the most hateful.

And why?

Because culture—any culture—is made of human beings.

And human beings change.

One minute someone is patriotic and loyal, and the next they’re hating the very institution they once believed gave them a way out of poverty, an abusive household, or a dead-end road.

We had a saying in the Army:

You can’t appreciate your old duty assignment until you’re at your new one.

And why?

Because humans hate change.

Even people who say they love growth and change can struggle with it, particularly when the change looks at them through the eyes of someone they love and says:

I don’t love you anymore.

I’m leaving.

I’ve found someone else.

Everyone is a lover of change until change finds them on the floor, filled with tears that could fill a lifetime—and a few more while they’re at it.

Everyone is a lover of liberty until liberty costs them something.

Everyone is a lover of life until the thing they thought was beautiful and acceptable turns on them and wounds them.

Ah, it’s so easy until it isn’t.

And that’s true for all of us.

All.

Of.

Us.

Everything’s awesome until it isn’t.

But there is another way.

To trust God.

To trust that wherever this life takes you, you are still held inside it.

Still sacred.

Still worthy.

Still part of a story whose meaning may not be visible to you yet.

I learned something about that the hard way.

In 2022, I became a whistleblower in the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division.

I was working for a leader who, at first, I admired.

He was kind.

Passionate.

Experienced in ways I wasn’t.

And I had experience he didn’t.

For a while, that difference was useful.

Then something changed.

My experience began to mean less to him.

He began speaking for me in rooms I should have been in.

Conversations became dictations.

I wasn’t participating anymore.

I was being told.

And this happens everywhere.

The Army is not fundamentally different from a corporation in this regard. It is a machine made of people working toward a mission, with different ideas about how to accomplish it.

Sometimes the mission is war.

Sometimes it is peace.

Sometimes the mission is simply to keep the machine moving.

And like every organization, it has a body, a tool, and a mission.

Sometimes we’re in control of that mission.

Sometimes we’re not.

That’s part of why institutions like the Army and law enforcement exist: to protect people who cannot protect themselves and to restore order when there is chaos.

Even when they themselves sometimes create chaos.

Because we’re human.

We like chaos.

We like it so much that we can convince ourselves someone else is supposed to clean it up.

Why else would reality television, politics, religion, outrage, and everything else that divides us be so compelling?

A lion is a lion.

A human is a human.

And humans can thrive in chaos, through chaos, and eventually to the other side of it.

Sometimes we even need chaos to discover who we are.

But there is a difference between encountering chaos and becoming dependent upon it.

Back to my boss.

He was a man on a mission.

Eventually, it became clear that it was his mission, not ours.

He spoke at me, not to me.

And my job slowly became babysitting his emotions.

Instead of him saying, I could probably calm down here and be open to an actual conversation instead of trying to win my point and mic-drop my way through life because winning makes me feel powerful, I became responsible for keeping him regulated.

So I babysat him.

And that meant I was constantly having to keep my own rage under control.

Until one day he called me at home and told me I wasn’t allowed to speak.

He was screaming at me.

Again.

And I remember thinking:

I am done with this man.

I am done with his shit.

I had counseled.

I had reminded.

I had tried.

And now I was done.

And he knew it.

Because he started that familiar dance people do when they know they’ve been confronted:

I’m not yelling.

That’s just your perception.

As if I don’t know when someone is yelling at me.

Thank you, asshole.

I know when someone is yelling at me.

Try again.

I reported him for harassment.

And suddenly, everyone wanted to talk.

Everyone had a story.

Everyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon now that I had opened the door.

But here’s the thing:

It was my name on that investigation.

Not theirs.

And I paid the price.

A few short months later, I was removed as the Deputy Assistant Director of Intelligence.

I had spent fifteen years developing an intelligence program with people I was proud of.

People I loved.

People who loved me, too.

And just like that, I was moved to another office.

No supervisory authority.

No meaningful work.

And I was expected to believe it was a growth opportunity.

Looking back, it was.

Just not in the way they meant.

I was sidelined.

The investigation was substantiated.

The man I had reported was removed.

But only for a while.

A couple of years later, he was back in a position of authority while I remained sidelined, without meaningful work, and involved in a legal battle that continues today.

I was passed over for promotion.

Training was denied.

I was moved again.

And again.

Even after I reached a settlement with the agency and was compensated for what I had experienced, it wasn’t long before the conflict started again.

So here I am.

A career I spent decades building no longer looks the way I thought it would.

And I’m fighting to keep what remains of it.

And if you’re a government employee in this administration, well—

good luck.

And I mean that sincerely.

My best to you, fellow comrade.

But here’s what being a whistleblower taught me:

The system doesn’t always protect you.

Sometimes it uses you.

The people who had your back in the beginning may not be there when the consequences arrive.

The people who called you constantly for decisions, answers, and help may suddenly become very difficult to find when your world comes crashing down.

And while people mean well when they say,

I’m so sorry.

You’ll get through this.

They’re not the ones walking it.

You are.

I am.

And this isn’t a condemnation of government.

Quite the opposite.

I saw something I believed was wrong.

I saw conduct I believed was unlawful.

I reported it.

And I don’t regret that.

What I regret is believing that running toward the fire would eliminate it.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes it makes the fire grow.

And sometimes, after you’ve spent years running toward the flames, you finally realize something:

You were never meant to become the fire in order to put it out.

You were meant to see it.

Name it.

Decide what is yours to do.

And then, when the time comes, know when to walk away.

Because not everyone who runs toward the fire is courageous.

Sometimes they’re simply running toward the only place they know how to exist.

Sometimes they aren’t trying to put the fire out.

They are trying to prove they can survive it.

And there is a difference.

I know that now.

I spent my life learning how to recognize patterns.

How to identify threats.

How to decipher signals.

How to find what doesn’t belong.

And maybe the greatest pattern I finally learned to recognize was the one inside myself:

I didn’t always run toward the fire because I was brave.

Sometimes I ran because I knew how to be there.

And sometimes I thought my willingness to enter the fire made me better than the people standing outside it.

It didn’t.

It just made me another person inside the flames.

And the wisdom isn’t in learning how to run faster toward the fire.

It is learning that you don’t have to enter every fire you see.

Some fires are yours to put out.

Some are yours to report.

Some are yours to learn from.

And some are simply burning.

And God is still God.

Even there.