Educated: A Memoir

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This book altered my brain chemistry.

It was one of the first books I read as an adult, and I read it before I went to college and was exposed to other ways of growing up and different cultures etc.

Tara grows up in the Appalachian mountains in one of the most abusive, neglectful homes you can imagine.

She learns how to read through the books she is given access to, so her writing style develops in a very specific way. This is part of what made this book special - you could tell it was a genuine, true story, behind told by someone who had been through it.

This book places a spotlight on the children still living these lifestyles and awareness of the different populations and socioeconomic groups within the United States.

There is every trigger you can imagine in this book so proceed with caution.

i have an extremely delicate ego. there is a little voice in the back of my head that is constantly comparing me to others, always studying and obsessing over my deficiencies. even when i read the synopsis of this book my heart was contorted with jealousy and shame. a story about a girl who makes it out of a difficult situation with no education and braves her way past the most prestigious ranks of academic achievement. i feel embarrassed even admitting it here..

from the onset i had already estranged the author as someone who i could never hope to understand.............................................................................(um.. i had a whirlwind of thoughts while i was spacing out in the shower, but now that im sitting here at the keyboard im at a loss for words. i dont know how to say it elegantly but ill try)

as i read on, and i learned about her traumas, i slowly let her in. i trusted her, i worried for her, i winced at the astronomical amount of pain she withstood. i kept reading because i wanted to see her happy, i wanted to see her make it through. it was never about harvard. it was never about being more successful, or having a published book. That wasn't the jealousy I had braced myself for when I started this book, and that's not the jealousy that threatens to break my heart whenever i have a conversation with anybody i judge to have had a normal upbringing. its not about scoring higher on an IQ test, or having read more books, or taking more classes. i think i realized finally, why i feel so alone.

"only then did i understand where the shame had come from: it wasn't that i hadn't studied in a marble conservatory, or that my father wasn't a diplomat. it wasn't that dad was half out of his mind, or that mother followed him. it had come from those moments on the floor, from knowing that mother was in the next room, closing her eyes and ears to me, and choosing, for that moment, not to be my mother at all.
...
the past was a ghost, insubstantial, unaffecting. only the future had weight."

that line filled me with hope.
- trading realities