TARA WESTOVER, EDUCATED
Our lives were a cycle — the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons — circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal. But eternity belonged only to the mountain.
My strongest memory is not a memory. It’s something I imaged, then came to remember as if it had happened.
“People want a miracle”, she told me. “They’ll swallow anything if it brings them hope, if it lets them believe they’re getting better. But there’s no such thing as magic. Nutrition, exercise, and a careful study of herbal properties, that’s all there is. but when they’re suffering, people can’t accept that.”
that there was something in me, something like what was in prophets, and it was not male or female, not old or young; a kind of worth that was inherent and unshakable.
But here was a principle through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense.
If the first fall was God’s will, whose was the second?
On the mountain, I could rebel.
I had decreed the ways in which we had been sculptured by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voice to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others -- because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.
There was a boldness in not dating or consistency, in not ripping out either the one page or the other. To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a fragility, but in this fragility there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s.
I often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote the night came not from ager or rage, but from doubt: I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give away to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.
First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.
“I can stand in this wind, because I’m not trying to stand in it,” I said. “This wind is just wind. You could withstand these gusts on the round, so you can withstand them in the air. There is o differences. Except the differences you make in your head.”
“You’ve made yourselves vulnerable. If you could just control your panic, this wind would be nothing.”
I thought I was finally being honest about the life I’d had before. It wasn’t the truth exactly, but it was true in a larger sense: true to what would be, int he future, now that everything had changed for the better. Now that Mother had found her strength.
The past was a ghost, insubstantial, unaffecting. Only the future had weight.
If I was insane, everything could be made to make sense. If I was sane, nothing could. This logic seemed damning. It was also a relief. I was not evil; I was clinical.
I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind.
I tried to read but the sentences meant nothing. I needed them to meant nothing. I couldn’t bear to string sentences into strands of thought, or to weave those strands into ideas. Ideas were too similar to reflection…
The thing about having a mental break down is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV fo twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.