《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 5 (10):原來蕭郎是路人

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 haddinner 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 everythinginvincible 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 Idid 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，我跟我先生最後一次面對面——尚未意識到未來的每次會面都不得不請律師介入調解。我們在餐館吃晚飯。我試着談我們的分居，卻只是爭吵。他告訴我，我是騙子、叛徒，他恨我，再也不跟我說話。過了兩天，我在苦惱難眠的一夜後醒來，發現兩架遭劫持的客機撞上城裏的兩棟最高的大樓，曾立於不敗的一切，如今成爲一 堆冒煙的廢墟。我打電話給我先生，確定他安然無恙，我們一同爲這起災難痛哭，但我沒去見他。那個星期，每個紐約人都放下仇恨，對眼前更大的悲劇表達尊重，而我卻依然沒去找我先生。於是我們兩人知道，一切都已結束。接下來的四個月來我沒再睡過，這說法並不誇張。

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.
我以爲之前我已粉身碎骨，但現在（爲了配合整個世界的倒塌），我的生活真正徹底粉碎了。如今想起我和大衛一同生活的那幾個月裏——在九一一事件以及我和我先生分居之後——所加之於他的一切
，不由得使我搖頭嘆息。可以想象，當他發現他所見過的最快樂、最有自信的女人竟然——當你跟她單獨相處時——充滿無底的哀傷，他是多麼吃驚。我又一次哭個不停。此時他開始退卻，也讓我看見
我那熱情浪漫英雄的另一面——孤獨如浪人一般，冷靜沉着，比一頭美國野牛更需要個人空間的大衛 。

(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?"

大衛突然間撤離感情，即使在最佳狀況下，對我可能也是一大災難，這還要考慮到我必須是世界上最樂觀的生物（像是金色獵犬和北極鵝的混合物），但現在我卻是在最糟狀況下。我失魂落魄，只想依賴，比被人抱在懷裏的三胞胎早產兒更需要關愛。他的退縮只是讓我更需要他，而我的需要只是更促成他的退縮。不久，他在我哀求的炮火下，撤退而去：“你要去哪裏？我們到底發生了什麼事情？”

(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)

（約會小技巧：男人喜歡這一套 。）

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 sufferingthe 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 startcraving 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 thedealer 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 neighborsjust 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 owneyes.

事實上，我已對大衛上了癮（我自我辯護的說法是，這都是他這個致命男一手培育而成的），而如今他的注意力動搖，我便遭受可以預見的後果。上癮是每一個以迷戀爲基礎的愛情故事所具有的特徵。一開始，你的愛慕對象給你一劑令人陶醉的迷幻藥，你從不敢承認需要它——一劑強有力的愛情興奮劑。不久，你開始渴望那種全副心思的關照 ，就像任何毒癮者如飢似渴的藥癮。不給藥時，立即病倒、發狂、衰竭（更甭說對最初鼓勵這種癮頭、而今拒絕再交出好東西的毒梟極爲憤慨——儘管你知道他把藥藏到什麼地方，但還是可惡至極，因爲他從前是免費奉送給的）。下一階段，瘦骨如柴的你在角落裏發抖，只能確定自己只要能再擁有一次“那個東西”，即使出賣靈魂或搶奪鄰居亦在所不惜。同時，你的愛慕對象逐漸對你感到厭惡。他看着你就像看一個陌生人，何況還是他曾熱愛過的人。令人感到諷刺的是，你很難責怪他。我是說，瞧瞧你自己吧。你一塌糊塗、教人泄氣，連自己也認不出來。於是，你達到迷戀的終點——殘酷無情地自貶。

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.

今天我之所以能夠平心靜氣地寫下這些文字，都足以證明時間的治癒力，因爲當事情發生時，我並未能接受事實。在婚姻失敗、城市遭受恐怖襲擊後，在難看的離婚當中（我的朋友布萊恩稱此種生命經驗爲“連續兩年，每天出一場悲慘車禍”），又失去了大衛，這實在令人難以承受。

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 visiblyretreated 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 kindof 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 fitfullyon the floor beside his bed, huddled on a pile of bathroom towels, like a dog.

大衛和我在白天繼續過我們的和樂日子，然而夜晚時分，躺在他的牀上，我成了核冬天的唯一倖存者，而他顯然一天比一天離我而去，彷彿我患上了傳染病。我逐漸恐懼夜晚，彷彿夜晚是施刑者的囚牢。我躺在大衛漂亮卻遙不可及的熟睡軀體身邊，捲入一陣寂寞的恐慌以及精心策劃的自殺念頭。我的身體的每個部位都令我疼痛。我覺得自己像某種原始的彈簧機器，繃得比建造時的承受度還緊，即將爆裂開來，對站在附近的任何人都會造成嚴重的危害。我想象自己的器官飛出自己的軀體，只爲了逃避內心猛烈的悲哀。大多數早晨，當大衛醒來時，多半發現我在他牀邊的地板上間斷地睡着覺，縮在堆浴室毛巾上，像一條狗。

"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

“又怎麼回事？”他問——又一個被我搞得筋 疲力竭的男人。我想，在那段期間，我大約瘦了三十磅 。