Educated

a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone
else’s. I have often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote that night
came not from anger or rage, but from doubt: I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim
certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated
for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never
occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.