Thank You

Dear Tara Westover,

     Thank you, Tara. Educated pulled something soul-stirring out of me. I am writing this in the midst of my child-like hope that you read this. I now hold the opportunity to attend two universities previously unattainable. You broke off pieces of your world to share and that has now made this future possible for me. The word ‘education’ rang empty in my ears up until your definition. I will break off pieces of my world to share in order to exemplify the meaning your life had to me.

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     I am not sure where to start or how to convey the varied emotional weights of my life to you. In truth, they seem to me well under your traumas. It is easy to grieve for you from an outsider's point of view. I was convinced I was this selfish girl beyond repair until I learned the term “verbal abuse.” I was convinced that everything my mother said and did was the truth. This had only clicked after witnessing parents and people more gentle than her. I would like to share my journey with you; I may not do it with the eloquence and justice you served for Educated, but that comes with further education, doesn’t it?

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     I was born and raised in Hesperia, California. The High Desert is known for its crime rate and lack of opportunity. It is very flat, and hot enough to make me wonder how I ever handled it. My mom had me at nineteen, as old as I am now. I had no father figure and no siblings. She struggled to make enough money for groceries and worked long hours. A heavy banging at the
door came one night. My mom swept me up and locked her door. She held me and hid with me in the corner, sobbing. I was four and to see her so helpless was jarring. When I ask her now, she tells me that there were multiple men with weapons attempting to break our door in. In the same
year, I overheard her and her boyfriend yelling. I heard her panicked shouts. I peered past my door and she had just locked herself in the bathroom. There was a loud crack as he punched a hole through the door. I wanted to say something, anything. I just felt like I was witnessing something forbidden. When you word your experiences, Tara, I really do feel like I am there. It is so clear yet I can see why it feels like it is not your own memories. My own experiences do not feel right when I open my mouth. I watched the same boyfriend a year later take her heel and swing it. He let go and it broke the rear view mirror of her car. I am always silent in these moments because I think a part of me knew I was not supposed to see this. If I said anything my
mom might get in trouble.

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     Starting at nine I would be home alone quite often. The deep droning winds, the heavy thunder, and the fear of someone breaking in made me paranoid. I kept making sure every entrance was locked and I had a weapon ready. We have been robbed times before and our neighbors were shot dead in those years so I think this was beyond reasonable childhood fear.

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     When my mom found out I liked someone in my seventh grade class, she lit up with fury. She raged and ripped my posters off of my wall. She took my radio and smashed that into the wall as well, leaving chips and dents. I was not allowed to leave the house for the summer. Every time I was selfish or irresponsible after that, I was met with the same anger. I never uttered a
word about my love interests since.

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     I started middle school at a theater school I loved. There was no sports team or academic focus. The arts in all forms were celebrated. I made real friends, friends that express heartfelt love and dress just as odd as I did. I also fell in love with someone I shouldn’t have. There were so many red flags I ignored. The relationship started out normal, then turned dark quickly. He
would consistently talk about his suicidal urges and how he was inherently bad. He might have had a fraction of what Shawn’s mentality harbors. During this time, my mom informed me we would be moving. I felt devastated. I loved my friends, I loved my school. At the time I did not understand why anyone would leave. Now I thank the stars I did not spend a year longer in the High Desert.

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     When I moved I was thrown into an intense depression. We moved to south Orange County, California. I completely attempted to dissociate. I wanted nothing to do with the high school I was meant to go to. I wanted nothing to do with the new home I would have. I spent the first half of my freshman year leaving class to keep my psychotic boyfriend alive. I would be so nervous that I occasionally got dizzy and left class to throw up in the trash cans. He had me texting him at all times. He would call me a bitch and threaten to murder my family. My mom went through my personal journals while I was away and found out about him. She was furious. She saw that I had been cutting my wrists and told me I was doing it for attention. I lost contact with him after he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and that was my first breath of air. I vowed once again I would never tell her about my relationships. I separated my personal life from her image of me completely and did not let her in again.

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     I fell in love with a girl at the end of my Sophomore year. She was and still is so kind and so beautiful. I felt a gentle love that I had not felt from anyone else. She showed me peace. When my mom found out, she said a great

many things she was unable to take back. She brought up Satan, she

brought up my estranged father, my schooling. She confiscated all of my means of communication and held my arms tight as if to squeeze more information from me. I locked myself in the bathroom and desperately tried to tell my grandma and girlfriend over my old laptop that something terrible would happen to me and I did not know what. My mom was banging on the door and I signed out of everything so she could not see what I sent. She spent a long while talking to me about God and taboos. She wanted me to be homeschooled and I would be under her rules. No communication with other kids, no high school, and a great deal of chores and church to make up for the horrible lie I apparently held. I refused homeschooling and walked
to school secretly in the morning. It was freezing and took me over an hour. By the time I got to school I was a crying mess. I was convinced I was a terrible child condemned to hell. The next day she made me pack my bags and live with my grandma. My mom took me back after she saw how forgiving my grandma was to me, I wish she hadn’t. This same event would happen again and again. She sent my girlfriend plenty of texts attempting to separate us but it never worked. My mom told me never to tell anybody

else what happened to me because I might get taken away. For every

mistake I made she reminded me that I’m the reason she pays rent and has to feed me.

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     She is proud of her strong and forceful parenting. She says no one will mess with her mothering skills. I can never come up with a response when she does. I began to hate being a girl. I hated it. I hated the fact that I was gay. I hated my chest and my anatomy. I hated how I was treated. How I was expected to be. A lot of research online led me to the conclusion that I would be a boy. For four years I threw away my birth name for a male name with friends and work, and never allowed myself to enjoy femininity ever again. It felt like it was my mother's thing, not mine. I was odd and wily, I couldn't possibly be the same as the girls I saw everyday.

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     I broke my foot at work and called my mom asking her to pick me up, she was angry, she said I would get fired, it was my fault. I cried in front of my manager and I got into her car. She refused to take me to a hospital even though my foot was broken because she was too tired. She was angry when my grandma took me to the hospital that night. It was another night I walked
outside to find my cat, my best friend of 10 years who was the only one with me throughout all of this, mauled by coyotes. I was convinced I would wake up from the dream. I was permanently scarred. My mom and friend said I was howling and shaking so bad they thought somebody attacked me. The next day I had no words and stared at the ceiling. My mind plays the scenario
for me to this day. I was unhinged and couldn’t work or talk for a long time. This will always feel fresh, I’m afraid.

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     Because of my identity crisis I was forced to move out when I turned 18. I saved up money and in the heat of summer moved all of my room into my car and drove off. My mom again was so intense it hurt my core. She said more things she cant take back. The day I went to take my kitten with me, she got in her car and blocked mine next to our busy street. She opened
my door while I was holding my cat and I screamed for her to stop, my girlfriend sped away and I was shaking. I wouldn't see my mom for a long time after that.

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     I struggled with fits of depression. My identity. My body. My finances. I was finally free but the stress of self sufficiency is almost as heavy. I spend my time hoping I get enough hours in work to pay rent but not so many so I can still go to college.

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     Months later, away from my mother, I would find myself missing the comforts of being female, the support, clothing and the expression, having sisters for friends. It took months of rewiring my predispositioned hate towards my biology to begin accepting it once more. Little by little I introduced my birth name and gender back into my life. I felt guilty and odd but once I passed the bump in the road, I began to love myself and my body. I began to do well in school.

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     Since then, my mom and I have learned and grown a lot together. Rent is crushing me, she offered me a better deal and I’m ready to move back in. After all of this, I wish I had enough room to talk about all of the good in my life. The fun times I have with my mother and how proud of her I am for persevering through young motherhood and poverty. She is a hard worker
and she is a lot more gentle now. I am grateful to her and continue to try to set aside my fear of her. She has done a lot of wonderful things for me.

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     There is guilt when I try talking about the darker parts of my life. I know that someone will respond with a level of sympathy I do not know how to receive. I do not feel like any more of a victim than I do just existing as the only first-person viewer of my life. When Oprah Winfrey was interviewing you, I felt angry. Maybe I shouldn’t have. She described your journey as one coming out of the shadows. I do not think it is that simple. It is very hard to feel like a hero or a survivor. I think it is about accepting what happened to you and then putting it on the shelf. Never forgetting it but trying your best not to be consumed by it. Separating the bad from the good and holding it with moderation.

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     After reading Educated I cried my eyes out. I wanted to do even better for myself, just as you had. The next day I confessed to my academic counselor that I wanted to go to one of the major universities in the U.S. My mother told me I couldn’t because of the cost but I wanted to try. My counselor informed me there was a scholarship for low income families that will cover
the cost between UCLA or USC. I feverishly switched my goal for a transfer to UCLA, confounded I had a 4.0. Had it not been for you, I would’ve never asked. I cried in joy this time.

 

Forever thankful,
Madison Chaparro