Essay Contest Winners

               “Papa, why is the sky blue?”

               We strolled through the forested clearing, and he took my hand tenderly. The breeze blew my bluntly cut thick hair and ruffled his soft thin short cut. My soft small and supple smooth hands clasped in his old rough fingers. I looked at his weathered face and saw the baby blue of the sky brilliantly reflected in the pools of his dark eyes.

               “See, the diffraction of the atmosphere when the sun is at a high point propagates the blue light waves. The blue light waves travel the furthest and have the longest wavelength. When the sun is on the horizon, the red waves are the ones that are refracted to your vision.”

               I turned my head up to the sky in complete wonder and awe. I was only 8 but the simple beauty of the world captivated me. Logic bloomed in my mind like the green foliage encircling around us in the clearing; information trickled through the crevices of my brain like the creek running through. You can explain the world we live in because of physics. Any time you ask, “why does something happen?” There's a physics phenomena explaining it. 

               Moments like this weaved and coursed through my entire childhood. I grew up learning English, Indonesian, and the language of physics. As the chapters of my life turned, I began to face many health issues. Depression, anxiety, heart and blood pressure issues, chronic pain. My past weighed upon me like a thousand bricks; and you know it only takes one tied to your ankle to drown. The pressure was put on me until the PSI broke the gauge and I exploded. It came to the point where almost every day, I could not muster the strength to come to school. 

               The times I did, I attended the day for the prospect of physics class. 

               I came into the classroom crying one day, trying to salvage the shattered pieces of my livelihood. I curled up in my seat, and my hand trembled harder than an earthquake as I wrote down my work. The tears were forcefully dragged down my face by gravity and came crashing into the paper in tiny blots.

               My teacher came over and rested a hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked up at her, my face wet, nose clogged with snot, eyes red. I swallowed my tears. 

               “What’s wrong? Do you want to work outside?” she said gently. She was a lean, stoic woman. Perceptive and judgemental, at first cold to me. But in this moment everything about her softened. 

               I nodded, stuttering a meek “thank you.” That was a thank you that I wished I could echo a thousand times, the words bouncing off every surface and multiplying infinitely. Because for all of time itself, I would be grateful to her for that single moment. 

               I composed myself and after class I lingered next to her desk, hands nervously clasped behind my back. I looked around her room while she wrapped up class. 

               “I’m going to need extended time for this assignment. I’m really falling behind on stuff, and I just feel hopeless. Maybe taking this class was a mistake.” I said despairingly. 

               She gave me that unbreaking stare, the one where I can never tear my eyes away from her intense gaze. The one where I cannot help but listen and digest every single word that came out of her mouth. “Asa, you have to learn how to advocate for yourself. Let me know ahead of time when you need extended time, which assignments you need excused. You are a talented and smart girl, and you clearly work hard on physics. You may be suffering right now, but taking AP physics was never a mistake. I am glad to have you in my class. I believe you can be successful.”

               Later that night I crawled out of bed, and stood before my mirror. At that moment all I saw in the reflection was my ragged, matted hair. My eyebags deeper than the mariana trench. My body, emaciated and thin. My lips were dry, cracked and bloody, splotched with dark patches of scars. When I licked them, I tasted blood. Light is reflected by mirrors, but when I looked, this mirror only reflected darkness. And like my physical state, my state of mind had decayed. If I was an experiment, I was one gone wrong. 

               So I wondered: If physics could explain every phenomena, could it explain what was happening to me? Is there even an answer to this problem that could be explained with mathematics? Could I derive an expression given the circumstances?

               Many would point to biology, chemistry, psychology. But physics can describe what was happening in a new light. The trauma in the past was a force: it affects me as an equal and opposite reaction in the present and the future. I gravitated to things that were bad for me. My sister saw herself in me and similar charges repulse each other. My family and I collided and pushed each other away. My mind and moods were like a pendulum, always bound to rise and fall. My body failed because once disease is in motion it will always be in motion until something stops it. Just like everything in this world, I am never content, complete, because I am never at equilibrium. I am never at peace. 

               But perhaps-- I could grab that mood pendulum and bring it to stability and stillness. Maybe I could apply an outside force and stop the motion of disease. Then maybe, I can achieve equilibrium. Things could get better with help from those who believed in me, like my physics teacher; those who are experts on my ailments and incredibly bright, like my doctors; and those whose love for me was more boundless than the expansion of the universe, like my parents.

               Most of all I realized: just like energy conserved, I cannot be created or destroyed. There is simply no use in trying to destroy myself. I can only change. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that I can change.