Astrophysics was my love.
I wonder why I left it and started doing solid state physics.
Maybe because I got influenced by M, “You will have more options here.” maybe it was that quiet bitterness that comes after too many small sacrifices, the whisper that says, “Why should I be the one to sacrifice every time?”
Maybe I ran away.
Maybe I was coward enough to escape the burden of expectation, the endless chase for a discovery that might never come.
Or maybe the purpose of doing it died with S.
She loved the stars more than I ever could. For her, astronomy wasn’t just science; it was intimacy with the infinite. She looked at the night sky like someone remembering home. After she was gone, the sky stopped being a place to look into and became a place to look at.
Sometimes I think I didn’t just leave astrophysics. I left a version of myself that still believed in wonder. To be very honest, I never liked solid state physics. Crystals, currents, and lattices… they feel too confined, too obedient. The equations don’t wander; they stay where they’re told. Everything is measurable, everything repeatable. There’s no mystery left, no silence that stretches into awe.
But I like what I get to do in the labs. Labs are fun in solid state. I am currently working on implementation of a python based experimental control framework for optical characterization of semiconductor quantum devices. It’s intricate, frustrating, and strangely alive. There’s a quiet satisfaction in watching machines respond to code.
It’s fun, yes.
But sometimes, in the middle of coding, I catch myself thinking about photons traveling through interstellar space. The real ones, not the ones bouncing inside a cryostat. The difference between cosmic light and lab light is distance. Scale. Meaning. The photons I measure now are domesticated; they behave. The ones from the stars arrive wild, aged, touched by the dust of centuries. I miss that kind of light.
I also got my office today. I have to share this office with M.
Of course. The universe has a sense of humor. I wanted distance, but somehow, I keep getting pulled back into her orbit. She doesn’t mean harm, but her presence is gravity: subtle, inevitable, unasked for.
She wasn’t there today, that was a relief.
I sat alone for a while, pretending to arrange my things, but really, I was just looking at the patch of sky visible through the window. It’s not much, half a rectangle of fading blue. I wonder what S would have said about it. Probably something about how even city skies have stories if you learn to squint right.
I think about S often when I code.
How she’d tease me for giving up the cosmos for semiconductors.
How she’d say, “You traded galaxies for grids.”
She’d laugh, that half-sincere, half-sarcastic laugh she always had when she was right. And I’d pretend to defend myself, “But it is still physics.”
And she’d say, “Yes, but not the kind that breathes.”
I don’t think I ever told her, but I envied how easily she could love things that were beyond reach. I always wanted to understand the universe; she wanted to belong to it.
Okay okay… this post is becoming more about S and less about my thoughts. But then again, I am thinking about S, so maybe that’s fair.
I also went to the exercise class for Introduction to Solid State Physics I. The professor was livid when none of us showed interest in presenting the solutions to the problems. And when a group did, we as audience were half dead. He said, “You guys are master’s students. You need to keep up. This is not the standard we are setting here. This is not acceptable.”
He seems passionate about the subject. You can see it. The way his voice sharpens when he talks about Drude, or Sommerfeld Model, the way he looks disappointed when we don’t respond. He loves this subject. I almost envy that.
But on the other hand, there’s me.
Too shy. Too underconfident to go and present in front of the class.
And even when I want to, my mind betrays me. Words vanish mid-sentence. My speech stumbles; thoughts scatter like frightened birds. I hate it. The feeling of being trapped behind a glass wall, knowing what you want to say but unable to make the sound.
Negative symptoms of Schiz. I hate them more than the positive ones. The voices at least come and go, but the emptiness stays. The hesitation, the quiet disconnection… it builds a wall between thought and speech.
Maybe that’s why I prefer silence.
Silence doesn’t humiliate you.
Silence doesn’t misfire halfway through a sentence
And I don’t think professors understand how much courage it takes just to stand up and say something when you feel that way. They think silence is laziness, but sometimes silence is survival.
Anyway, when I look back, so much of my decisions depend on other people rather than mine. How strange it is, how much of my life seems shaped by other people’s gravity.
S said “look up,” and I did. Until I couldn’t anymore.
M said “options,” and I changed my orbit.
Maybe that’s what most of us do: move around the pull of other people’s certainties until we can’t tell which direction was originally ours. I keep wondering who I would have been if I’d stayed stubborn, if I’d fought harder for the sky. Would I have been braver or just lonelier in a different way?
I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to astrophysics.
Maybe I couldn’t even if I tried. The math has moved on, the people have moved on, and maybe the version of me that once belonged there no longer exists.
Still, I keep some ritual. I try to look at the night sky when I am alone. Try to find stories in the sky. If I get my eyes on a cluster of stars, I try to name it, like an apology. I imagine S somewhere in that direction, laughing at my sentimentality.
“You’re still at it,” she’d say.