Educated

by Tara Westover

But when my own mother didn’t believe me, I stopped believing myself.*1

The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.

So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy.

If the first fall was God’s will, whose was the second?

How do you thank a brother who refused to let you go, who seized your hand and wrenched you upward, just as you had decided to stop kicking and sink? There aren’t words for that, either.

It was then I realized how cruelly I had judged her, how my perception of her had been distorted, because I’d been looking at her through my father’s harsh lens.

I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.