《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 17 (31):我抑鬱了
I'd stopped taking my medication only a few days earlier. It had just seemed crazy to be taking antidepressants in Italy. How could I be depressed here?
幾天前，我才停止服藥。在意大利服用抗憂鬱劑似乎不太對勁。住在這裏怎可能覺得抑鬱？
I'd never wanted to be on the medication in the first place. I'd fought taking it for so long, mainly because of a long list of personal objections (e.g.: Americans are overmedicated; we don't know the long-term effects of this stuff yet on the human brain; it's a crime that even American children are on antidepressants these days; we are treating the symptoms and not the causes of a national mental health emergency . . .). Still, during the last few years of my life, there was no question that I was in grave trouble and that this trouble was not lifting quickly. As my marriage dissolved and my drama with David evolved, I'd come to have all the symptoms of a major depression—loss of sleep, appetite and libido, uncontrollable weeping, chronic backaches and stomachaches, alienation and despair, trouble concentrating on work, inability to even get upset that the Republicans had just stolen a presidential election . . . it went on and on.
一開始我並不想靠藥物治療。我長時間反對服藥，主要因爲一長串個人的反對理由（諸如，美國人用藥過度；我們不清楚這些東西對於人腦的長期影響；近來連美國孩童也吃起抗憂鬱劑，這是一種罪過；我們治療的是症狀，並未能根治造成全國心理健康危機的原因……）。儘管如此，生命中的過去幾年間，毫無疑問，我陷入極度困境，而這困境短期內無法解除。隨着婚姻瓦解，與大衛之間的戲劇性發展，我有了嚴重憂鬱症的所有徵狀——失眠、食慾減退、喪失性慾、不能自已地失聲痛哭、慢性背痛與胃痛、疏離與絕望、難以專心工作，甚至對共和黨搶了總統大選一事無動於衷……等等，等等。
When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
你在森林中迷失的時候，有時得花一陣子時間才明白自己迷了路。很長一段時間，你可以說服自 己只是偏離步道幾米距離，隨時都可能找到返回步道起點的路。而後夜幕一再降臨，你仍不清楚自己的方位，此時不得不承認自己已遠離步道，甚至不再知道太陽從哪邊升起。
I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological?(Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?
我承擔我的抑鬱，就像它是我生命中的一搏，事實也確是如此。我研究我自己的抑鬱經驗，嘗試解開原因。這一切沮喪源自何處？是不是心理上的原因？（父母的過錯？）或只是暫時性的，我生命中的“倒黴時刻”？（離婚事件了結後，抑鬱是否會隨之而終？）是不是遺傳？（有多種稱謂的憂鬱症，在我的家族傳了好幾代，帶着它哀傷的新娘：酗酒問題。）是不是文化原因？（一個後女性主義時代的美國職業女性嘗試在緊張疏離的都市世界中求得平衡而導致的結果？）是不是星座的緣故？（我之所以如此哀傷，是不是因爲我是敏感的巨蟹座，主宮全由反覆無常的雙子星座控制？）是否和藝術有關？（搞創作的人難道不都是因爲超敏感且與衆不同而爲抑鬱所苦？）是否和進化有關？（我身上是否帶有遠古人類試圖在野蠻世界求生存而殘存的恐慌？）是因果報應？（這些悲傷時刻是否只是前生作惡多端的結果，在解脫前夕最後階段的阻礙？）是荷爾蒙作祟？飲食問題？哲學問題？季節性？環境造成？我是否也感染了全球對上帝渴求的症狀？是內分泌失調？或者我只是需要性關係？
