The Journalist

A violent alcoholic once told me “knowledge is power.”

That man was my father, and the irony reeked like the booze on his breath.

How does a man who spent his life drinking, lecture me on how education is important?

How does he tell me that I ought to better myself while he actively ruins his life?

His life and mine. 

His violence was loud and piercing, leaving silent scars.

My misery left no room for hope, only the constant fear of falling into abysmal failure.

But soon enough,

pain turned to passion.

I defiantly turned to writing, and wrote every day for hours about torment,

my father,

and my future,

but mostly wrote of the life I wanted desperately to escape.

Diaries piled up filled with broken dreams, becoming testaments to my ambition and ability.

Knowledge became the power to improve myself and my life.

And then it struck me:

I had to go further.

Before this moment of revelation all I wanted was a second chance at life,

to escape the prison my father and I had built;

yet freedom has never come without a fight.

In the midst of cloudiness, the fog lifted.

My father, even in his drunken state, appeared to be right:

knowledge is power;

and I began to pursue a brave new world in possession of that power,

to rise from the ashes a fiery new person,

an individual,

an intellectual,

a scholar,

and a journalist.

My father made me realize how little others thought of me,

and how little I thought of others.

No one bothers to consider the plight of others;

a journalist must.

A journalist writes of the sufferings of humanity.

A journalist writes about the human condition.

A journalist writes about truth.

I want to be a journalist. 

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