Educated

by Tara Westover

warped

I kept the burden for myself,

anemic,

und...

callously,

“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”

quiet to the point of invisibility,

This is the first time I’ve seen you at home in yourself. It’s in the way you move: it’s as if you’ve been on this roof all your life.”

control your panic,

syntax.

subdued.

Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you.

“Distance is nothing to living energy. I can send the corrected energy to you from here.”

They debated concepts from the lecture; I debated whether to drink my coffee.

They sounded similar but they were not.

so she could administer justice however she saw fit,

I was stunned: I, who had sneaked into this grand place as an impostor, might now enter through the front door.

The sun was hot, the pastries ambrosial.

Maybe, she said. But sometimes I think we choose our illnesses, because they benefit us in some way.

You were my child. I should have protected you.

when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she had been, she became that mother for the first time.

she, that docile woman, had a power in her the rest of us couldn’t contemplate.

The future could be different from the past.

a celebrity in a crowded restaurant, trying not to be recognized.

I’d never seen him so full of life.

accuse.

He had said the exact wrong thing.

I went to bed but not to sleep.

Journaling is contemplative, and I didn’t want to contemplate anything.

I would lose custody of my own mind.

What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon; it was me.

I managed to hide from Drew how poorly I was doing,