Educated

by Tara Westover

It felt oddly dispossessing, being handed this first legal proof of my personhood: until that moment, it had never occurred to me that proof was required.

After that night, there was never any question of whether I would go or stay. It was as if we were living in the future, and I was already gone.

I was broker than the Ten Commandments—so

retaining power always feels like the way forward.

I had been taught to read the words of men like Madison as a cast into which I ought to pour the plaster of my own mind, to be reshaped according to the contours of their faultless model. I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself.

“I would enjoy serving the dinner,” I said, “more than eating it.”

Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”

the reason I couldn’t return to Cambridge was that being here threw into great relief every violent and degrading moment of my life.

I read through the afternoon and into the evening, developing for the first time a vocabulary for the uneasiness I’d felt since childhood.

So what if I watched TV for 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.

You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.