Madison Butchko
“Not again.”
Mustering my energy, I slipped my notebook into my backpack before slipping out of the lecture hall. I couldn’t be in class. I couldn’t be in my body.
Attending university was my lifelong dream. Knowing I needed to finance my education, I joined the Air Force and was awarded a full-tuition ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) scholarship. With my childhood dreams in hand, I headed to the East Coast at 17. Each night, closing my eyes, I envisioned myself standing in my Air Force Blues, right hand raised, taking my oath as an officer. I believed my dreams were real, truly mine; however, believing amounted to nothing more than a placebo.
My health deterioration began with my biking accident, resulting in a concussion and multiple fractures. I spent countless hours in physical therapy, driven by a single goal: to return to military training and my classes. Maintaining the ROTC scholarship required cadets to be in good health with a minimum GPA. Though I was determined to meet those requirements, the more I pushed my limits, the more my body resisted. I believed that sheer willpower could carry me through early mornings of physical training and endless hours of schoolwork. I just needed to try even harder. But chronic illness dramatically shifted my definition of “trying hard” from achieving high marks to just holding myself together to get through lecture.
Putting all of my mental energy into trying to make up work after hospital stays and enduring the sleepless weeks, I thought of the proverb, “If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.” But what about the body? The body cannot be ignored. I swallowed that truth. Pushing around cold noodles with my fork, I didn’t eat for fear of risking more stomach pain. I still sat in the dining hall to feel a sense of normalcy. The ache of hunger was much more bearable.
I didn’t know why I felt so much pain. Neither did the doctors. Stomach ulcers, at first, and then other illnesses — scattered diagnoses that failed to explain the persistent agony. Trapped by the financial need to stay in the military, I worried that seeking further medical help would jeopardize my scholarship. Furthermore, the rigid demands of my military commitments prevented me from taking any time off. Losing control over my body left me helpless. But I pushed myself because the thought of leaving ROTC and university brought on an even worse pain.
My health infiltrated every aspect of my life — how I felt, acted and thought. I was a marionette to the pain that pulled my strings, twisted my body and thoughts, controlled my every move. The enormity of the pain became a part of me. It became me. My pain became me when I performed poorly academically, corroding my lifelong identity as a high achiever. My pain became me when I constantly explained my struggles to my professors, my military commander, my friends and my family. My pain became me once I no longer knew how to live with my new self.
After three years, I finally decided to take time off. Leaving school made me feel like a failure, but so did the idea of staying there in such a depleted state. During my time off, I was medically discharged from the military, ending my five-year post-grad service commitment.
Since I was seventeen, I had envisioned my life in military service — a certainty now gone. Even my physics major had been chosen to fit the parameters of my scholarship — not something I had picked for myself.
Returning home to Michigan, I returned to the basics: sleeping, eating, breathing. Simple acts that were once ordinary now became my focus — my way of reclaiming how to live again. Once more, I was ready for new beginnings, new opportunities and a new version of myself. I knew I needed healing, but I didn’t know how. I sought medical care and stepped back from the relentless stress. Yet, I understood that mental and emotional healing would require more than a doctor’s visit.
Without my military scholarship, I needed to find a job to support myself. I applied to be an AP Physics teaching assistant and an elementary school science instructor. Though I was excited to be accepted into these positions, I felt hesitant about returning to the classroom, still overwhelmed by my previous fear of failure and my anxieties over health issues hurting my performance.
Transitioning into my new role, I began preparing lesson plans on AP Physics material, which meant relearning the concepts. Initially, going over kinematics and understanding the motion of bodies felt rudimentary. Why calculate the trajectory of a ball thrown into the air? But as I explored further, what seemed straightforward gave way to a deeper complexity.
The equations no longer stood alone; they intertwined, each one part of a larger, cohesive framework. In physics, nothing exists in isolation — every concept is built on another. Its beauty lies in this intricate connectedness, where each idea complements the next, forming a unified, elegant whole.
Physics helped me appreciate the underlying principles at play — even in my own life. The rhythmic sway of a swing was no longer just a childhood joy but an embodiment of simple harmonic motion. Kicking a soccer ball became a demonstration of projectile motion and Newton’s Laws in action.
For so long, my path had been dictated by necessity, not desire. Physics was something I had to study, not something I chose to learn. Every math and physics class in university was intense and stressful, with me constantly struggling to grasp each concept and moving from exam to exam. Distress and the rigid demands of the ROTC scholarship shaped my view of learning. However, with my new approach, a shift occurred. Physics began to feel less like an obligation and more like a lens through which I could understand and share the forces that shape our world — from the smallest atoms to the vast galaxies, from teacher to student.
Teaching high school and elementary students brought an unexpected joy: the quiet satisfaction of breaking complex ideas into something they could grasp and piece together on their own. I took pride in the way my students engaged with lessons I had carefully crafted, and in those moments, my academic stress seemed to fade. Once, the classroom had been a place of dread, a reminder of my failures. But slowly, as I worked closely with my students, it became a place of growth. Their small victories became mine. Teaching didn’t just reconnect me with physics — it reconnected me with my community and with myself.
But that is not to say I still don’t wake up with that familiar tightness in my chest. That is not to say I’ve recaptured the innocence of my younger self, or that there aren’t days when getting out of bed feels impossible, or that I’ve fully allowed myself to dream again. The pain? It still lingers, following quietly. But here’s what I can say: I’ve met pain. I’ve experienced it, sat with it, listened to it and let it reshape the person I thought I was.
Pain has hollowed me out, and in that emptiness, it created space for more empathy, compassion and understanding than I ever knew I could hold. I know how pain can strip you down, crack you open and leave you to rebuild from the fragments it leaves behind. I know how pain doesn’t simply disappear; it lingers, following quietly, like a shadow — dark yet familiar, hovering at the edges. But now, it no longer leads. This time, I decide where to go.