Samantha Lu

AP Literature and Composition

White

4 September 2020

A Healing Void

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma

you have faced and its impact on you.

I constantly avoided confrontation as a child. I struggled to try and stand up for myself,

because I felt that my words would fall into a void that would spit pointed daggers back at me.

For most of my life, I stayed silent. I stayed silent when peers would slant their eyes and mock

me. I stayed silent when they tried to offend me by putting up their pinkies, dubbing it the

“Chinese middle finger.” I stayed silent when they accused me of eating cats and dogs. Speaking

only resulted in my own body silencing me by reducing me to tears and hyperventilation. Those

around me would either stay silent or pit themselves against me. Instead of facing the noise, I

chose the immoral comfort of standing idly by, and thus locked myself in a mirage.

But, news of a sickness that plagued the home country of my family spread as quickly as

the virus itself. This barren void that I observed from within my desert oasis began to split and

the chasm only widened as the ground beneath me began to crack and falter. The dull wasteland

around me bore depressing and muted shades of grey and black. I only tuned out the muffled

screams of anger and desperation and the gunshots loaded with slurs. I feigned ignorance when

rageful people would attempt to strip my comfort and morality by associating me with the deaths

of hundreds of thousands. I crafted a bubble violated with unsealable holes and placed myself on

a false moral pedestal by “being the bigger person and walking away from hate” when, in reality,
I remained that intimidated little girl who cowered in the corner, hiding her face from the hateful

gaze of racism.

This virus that snakes through our everyday lives infected more than our bodies. It

infected and exposed the embedded hatred in our minds, livening the dormant disease and

bacteria that would only breed more hate in its limelight. I realized that in the time span of those

13 years, nothing changed. The little girl whose peers bullied her because of her skin color lived

in the same time period as the girl who saw people get spat on in the streets and shot to death like

dogs. The cracked dam of ignorance finally burst. From my broken illusion, the deafening rush

of scalding water flooded the void and eroded its barren landscape. For days upon days, the

water flowed with no resistance, possessing the determination of a thousand barbarians. It roared

in fury and cursed itself for its prolonged restraint. But it stirred a cacophony of noise that would

silence others.

I realized that nothing grows in rushing water. I still heard nothing during the endless

days the torrent of water prolonged, and the surge of rage only made the void deeper. I would do

no good to simply wash away every single pain I and others endured. I would have to properly

lay it all to rest, letting the streams and ponds of my mind cleanse these wounds. I entered a

healing process and wandered the once-barren landscape. I wanted to create and grow a healthy

environment, but I could not do that by standing idly by or throwing myself into the thicket. I

slowly invited those who I silently watched suffer and those who watched me suffer silently,

welcoming conversation. The cacophony of rushing water died down to a peaceful trickle,

overlapped by amiable conversation. Though the void still has much more healing to do, I can at

least see grass grow between the cracks of earth.