Educated

by Tara Westover

People will trade hundred-dollar bills for a roll of toilet paper.”

Ha! Fitting during the pandemic!

Maybe her transformation was merely a temporary shift in my perspective—for that moment, perhaps the perspective was his, that of the brother I hated, and loved.

I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted 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 voices 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.

I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I accepted, finally, that I had made the decision for my own sake. Because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. It was the only way I could love him.