《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 5 (10):原来萧郎是路人

On September 9, 2001, I met with my husband face-to-face for the last time, not realizing that every future meeting would necessitate lawyers between us, to mediate. We had dinner in a restaurant. I tried to talk about our separation, but all we did was fight. He let me know that I was a liar and a traitor and that he hated me and would never speak  to me again. Two mornings later I woke up after a troubled night's sleep to find that hijacked airplanes were crashing into the two tallest buildings of my city, as everything invincible that had once stood together now became a smoldering avalanche of ruin. I called my husband to make sure he was safe and we wept together over this disaster, but I did not go to him. During that week, when everyone in New York City dropped animosity in deference to the larger tragedy at hand, I still did not go back to my husband. Which is how we both knew it was very, very over. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I did not sleep again for the next four months. 

2001年9月9日，我跟我先生最后一次面对面——尚未意识到未来的每次会面都不得不请律师介入调解。我们在餐馆吃晚饭。我试着谈我们的分居，却只是争吵。他告诉我，我是骗子、叛徒，他恨我，再也不跟我说话。过了两天，我在苦恼难眠的一夜后醒来，发现两架遭劫持的客机撞上城里的两栋最高的大楼，曾立于不败的一切，如今成为一 堆冒烟的废墟。我打电话给我先生，确定他安然无恙，我们一同为这起灾难痛哭，但我没去见他。那个星期，每个纽约人都放下仇恨，对眼前更大的悲剧表达尊重，而我却依然没去找我先生。于是我们两人知道，一切都已结束。接下来的四个月来我没再睡过，这说法并不夸张。

I thought I had fallen to bits before, but now (in harmony with the apparent collapse of the entire world) my life really turned to smash. I wince now to think of what I imposed  on David during those months we lived together, right after 9/11 and my separation from my husband. Imagine his surprise to discover that the happiest, most confident woman he'd ever met was actually—when you got her alone—a murky hole of bottomless grief. Once again, I could not stop crying. This is when he started to retreat, and that's when I saw  the other side of my passionate romantic hero—the David who was solitary as a castaway, cool to the touch, in need of more personal space than a herd of American bison. David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form.
我以为之前我已粉身碎骨，但现在（为了配合整个世界的倒塌），我的生活真正彻底粉碎了。如今想起我和大卫一同生活的那几个月里——在九一一事件以及我和我先生分居之后——所加之于他的一切
，不由得使我摇头叹息。可以想象，当他发现他所见过的最快乐、最有自信的女人竟然——当你跟她单独相处时——充满无底的哀伤，他是多么吃惊。我又一次哭个不停。此时他开始退却，也让我看见
我那热情浪漫英雄的另一面——孤独如浪人一般，冷静沉着，比一头美国野牛更需要个人空间的大卫 。

(something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armfull of premature infant triplets. His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of, "Where are you going? What happened to us?"

大卫突然间撤离感情，即使在最佳状况下，对我可能也是一大灾难，这还要考虑到我必须是世界上最乐观的生物（像是金色猎犬和北极鹅的混合物），但现在我却是在最糟状况下。我失魂落魄，只想依赖，比被人抱在怀里的三胞胎早产儿更需要关爱。他的退缩只是让我更需要他，而我的需要只是更促成他的退缩。不久，他在我哀求的炮火下，撤退而去：“你要去哪里？我们到底发生了什么事情？”

(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)

（约会小技巧：男人喜欢这一套 。）

The fact is, I had become addicted to David (in my defense, he had fostered this, being something of a "man-fatale"), and now that his attention was wavering, I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogen-ic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speed-ball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this ad-diction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, 
much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unre-cognizable even to your own eyes.

事实上，我已对大卫上了瘾（我自我辩护的说法是，这都是他这个致命男一手培育而成的），而如今他的注意力动摇，我便遭受可以预见的后果。上瘾是每一个以迷恋为基础的爱情故事所具有的特征。一开始，你的爱慕对象给你一剂令人陶醉的迷幻药，你从不敢承认需要它——一剂强有力的爱情兴奋剂。不久，你开始渴望那种全副心思的关照 ，就像任何毒瘾者如饥似渴的药瘾。不给药时，立即病倒、发狂、衰竭（更甭说对最初鼓励这种瘾头、而今拒绝再交出好东西的毒枭极为愤慨——尽管你知道他把药藏到什么地方，但还是可恶至极，因为他从前是免费奉送给的）。下一阶段，瘦骨如柴的你在角落里发抖，只能确定自己只要能再拥有一次“那个东西”，即使出卖灵魂或抢夺邻居亦在所不惜。同时，你的爱慕对象逐渐对你感到厌恶。他看着你就像看一个陌生人，何况还是他曾热爱过的人。令人感到讽刺的是，你很难责怪他。我是说，瞧瞧你自己吧。你一塌糊涂、教人泄气，连自己也认不出来。于是，你达到迷恋的终点——残酷无情地自贬。

So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination—the complete and merciless devaluation of self. The fact that I can even write calmly about this today is mighty evidence of time's healing powers, because I didn't take it well as it was happening. To be losing David right 
after the failure of my marriage, and right after the terrorizing of my city, and right during the worst ugli-ness of divorce (a life experience my friend Brian has compared to "having a really bad car accident every single day for about two years") . . . well, this was simply too much.

今天我之所以能够平心静气地写下这些文字，都足以证明时间的治愈力，因为当事情发生时，我并未能接受事实。在婚姻失败、城市遭受恐怖袭击后，在难看的离婚当中（我的朋友布莱恩称此种生命经验为“连续两年，每天出一场悲惨车祸”），又失去了大卫，这实在令人难以承受。

David and I continued to have our bouts of fun and compatibility during the days, but at night, in his bed, I became the only survivor of a nuclear winter as he visibly retreated from me, more every day, as though I were infectious. I came to fear nighttime like it was a tor-turer's cellar. I would lie there beside David's beautiful, inaccessible sleeping body and I would spin into a panic of loneliness and meticulously detailed suicidal thoughts. Every part of my body pained me. I felt like I was some kind of primitive springloaded machine, placed un-der far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I 
imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me. Most mornings, David would wake to find me sleeping fitfully on the floor beside his bed, huddled on a pile of bathroom towels, like a dog.

大卫和我在白天继续过我们的和乐日子，然而夜晚时分，躺在他的床上，我成了核冬天的唯一幸存者，而他显然一天比一天离我而去，仿佛我患上了传染病。我逐渐恐惧夜晚，仿佛夜晚是施刑者的囚牢。我躺在大卫漂亮却遥不可及的熟睡躯体身边，卷入一阵寂寞的恐慌以及精心策划的自杀念头。我的身体的每个部位都令我疼痛。我觉得自己像某种原始的弹簧机器，绷得比建造时的承受度还紧，即将爆裂开来，对站在附近的任何人都会造成严重的危害。我想象自己的器官飞出自己的躯体，只为了逃避内心猛烈的悲哀。大多数早晨，当大卫醒来时，多半发现我在他床边的地板上间断地睡着觉，缩在堆浴室毛巾上，像一条狗。

"What happened now?" he would ask—another man thoroughly exhausted by me. I think I lost something like thirty pounds during that time.
Eat, Pray, Love

“又怎么回事？”他问——又一个被我搞得筋 疲力竭的男人。我想，在那段期间，我大约瘦了三十磅 。