全书

Prologue:
描绘我孩童时的家：our house on the hillside 家在山腰上，可以看到山下高速校车驶过，但我家不一样：we don’t go to school. 父母有七个孩子，其中四个孩子没有出生证，这样政府也就不能逼着父母让我们去上学，书的主人公到九岁才去补办了证明，父亲坚信世界末日会到来“the days of abomination” 还有政府阴谋论
“when the world of men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected”
“our lives were a cycle—the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons—circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all.
Part one: choose the good 择善而从
奶奶希望孩子们去读书，而不是 “roaming the mountain like savages”，一个早上奶奶问我要不要去上学，爷爷奶奶每年快入冬就会搬去亚利桑那州，要让我跟他们一起走，然后在那边上学。而我受父亲的影响，担心联邦政府围剿家人，选择留下。其中有一段父亲相信上帝让他选择黄油和蜂蜜，而牛奶怎么邪恶的。
The midwife 接生婆
父亲想要母亲学做接生婆，这样如果未来孙儿要接生就不需要靠外人：self-reliance, completely off the grid。在此过程中母亲变独立了，从前的她：fragile, breathy.
“midwifery was not illegal in the state of Idaho, but it had not yet been sanctioned. If a delivery went wrong, a midwife might face charges for practicing medicine without a license.”
Cream shoes 奶油色鞋子
讲到母亲出生的家庭环境，外婆因为祖父是酒鬼的关系在街坊邻居里被瞧不起，而外公品性端正才从海军退伍就娶了外婆，结婚后外婆一直决心要把打造个完美的家庭，这样母亲不会再受到轻视。
“grandma was from the “wrong kind” of family but embedded in a pious mormon community that, like many communities, visited the crimes of the parents on the children”… “she dedicated herself to constructing the perfect family, or at least the appearance of it. This would, she believed, shield her daughters from the social contempt that had so wounded her.
母亲不是个叛逆的人，不过也受不了外婆严格管束，在外人看着光鲜，但一直以来母亲都改变自己去迎合别人，活在外人的期许里，如笼中之鸟没有自由。而父亲刚好相反
“she couldn’t stop herself from speculating what people wanted her to be, and from contorting herself, compulsively, unwillingly, into whatever it was. Living in her respectable house in the centre of town, crowded by four other houses, each so near anyone could peer through the windows and whisper a judgement, faye felt trapped.
描述年轻时候的父亲：
外貌：
“my father, gene, was one of those young men who somehow manage to seem both solemn and mischievous. His physical appearance was striking—ebony hair, a strict, angular face, nose like an arrow pointing toward fierce, deep-set eyes. His lips were pressed together in a jocular grin, as if all the world were his to laugh at.”
气质：
“there’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. In that vast space you can sail unaccompanied for hours, afloat on pine and brush and rock. It’s a tranquility born of sheer immensity; it calms with its very magnitude, which renders the merely human of no consequence. Gene was formed by this alpine hypnosis, this hushing of human drama.”
“i had no notion at the time that a person could be functional, lucid, persuasive, and something could still be wrong.”
最开始可能是父亲24岁，第二个孩子出生的时候决定不去医院而选择接生婆，30岁不让孩子去上学，之后的四年，父亲处理掉了家里的座机电话，不再去车管局更新驾照，不续车险，开始在家囤积食物。父亲40岁的时候weaver一家的事情发生了。
“the irony was that if dad was bipolar—or had any of dozen disorders that might explain his behaviour—the same paranoia was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and treated.
It finally occurred to me: that grandma was the only person who might have understood what was happening to me. How the paranoia and fundamentalism were carving up my life, how they were taking from me the people I cared about and leaving only degrees and certificates—an air of respectability—in their place. What was happening now had happened before. This was the second severing of mother and daughter. That tape was playing in a loop
Apache women
过完圣诞，父亲像失魂了一样，一言不语，走路手软趴趴吊着，肩膀软塌塌地，好像地心引力要把他拉到地底下。到了一月父亲不能下床了，平躺在床上空洞看着天花板。母亲开车带着家人去Arizona，让父亲在温暖的地方呆着，恢复精气神。
回家的路上发生了车祸，“blood gushed from Tyler’s mouth and down his shirt.” “audrey’s nose was strangely hooked and blood was streaming from it down her arm” “i had a gash on my forearm from where the seat’s frame had caught hold of me.” “mother’s face—her eyes, hidden under dark circles the size of plums, and the swelling distorting her soft features, stretching some, compressing others.”
“the front half of the car had been compressed, the engine arched, curving back over itself, like a fold in solid rock.”
母亲的脸伤得比较严重，tyler的强烈负罪感 ”he blamed himself for the accident, then kept on blaming himself for every decision that was made thereafter, every repercussion, every reverberation that clanged down through the years.”
“after the accident would always make me think of the apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.“
Honest dirt
Tyler 决定离开家去上大学，“it happens sometimes in families: one child who doesn’t fit, whose rhythm is off, whose meter is set to the wrong tune.”
最初母亲是相信学校和教育的，她想要自己的孩子得到最好的教育，而父亲觉得要学实用的技术，父母之前对此有过争执，母亲在家教孩子们认字数学，但是luke是有严重的学习障碍，母亲很努力让luke能学好，可惜还是失败，因此母亲也放弃了和父亲的争斗。但是Tyler不一样，他有口吃，性格喜欢安静，喜欢听音乐，喜欢有条不紊，规整的生活，他提出离开家父亲一开始不太放在心上，不过也拗不过Tyler的决心，我其他年长的兄弟虽然也有两个离开了家，但是他们只是重复父亲的老路，和父亲做一样的工作，只是独自出去组建自己的家庭。
“there had been a time, when tyler was a boy, when mother had been idealistic about education. She used to say that we were kept at home so we could get a better education than other kids.” “by the time I was eight, and Tyler sixteen we’d settled into a routine that omitted school altogether.”
“tyler stepped into a void. I don’t know why he did it and neither does he. He can’t explain where the conviction came from, or how it burned brightly enough to shine through the black uncertainty.”
Shield and buckler （做可靠的保护人）
三个哥哥都搬出去了，audrey满15岁开始挣钱之后也越来越不服父亲的管教，父亲只能带上luke和我们几个小孩子一起去工作，废品厂不再是无忧童年的游乐场了，而是充满有潜在危险残酷的地方
The family was shrinking, the old hierarchy compressing
“i had passed countless hours in the debris, jumping from one mangled car to the next, looting some, leaving others. It had been the backdrop for a thousand imagined battles—between demons and wizards, fairies and goons, trolls and giants. Now it was changed. It had ceased to be my childhood playground and had become its own reality, one whose physical laws were mysterious, hostile”
一次受伤后，我决定选择去上学，夫妻对我很失望 “it meant that i was not the daughter he had raised, the daughter of faith. I had tried to sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.”
The lord will provide
Luke 和父亲干活，汽油不小心倒在身上，没放心上夏天热很快就干了，下午干活点火的时候裤子着火了，而在家的我看到luke意识模糊地倒在家的草坪里，于是十岁的我一个人慌忙给他救助，可明明luke一直跟父亲一起，为什么父亲没有跟luke一起回家救治呢？父亲应该是用自己的身体去扑灭草坪上的火，防止蔓延成山林大火。
“luke might have severed the twine and hacked through the boots in a matter of seconds, but he went mad with panic and took off, dashing like a marked buck, spreading fire through the sagebrush and wheat grass, which were baked and brittle from the parched summer.
Tiny harlots
我找到了带孩子保姆的工作，工资不高，但因此我有机会学习钢琴和跳舞，一次舞台表演不巧父亲看到了，他对我们的服装表示厌恶，因为在保守的父亲眼里是低俗的，后来我改去学唱歌，我的歌声得到大家的喜欢，也让父亲觉得很骄傲。
Perfect in his generations
出乎我的意外，父亲并没有禁止我参加音乐剧选拔，虽然父亲还是担心我会被带坏。1999年底父亲相信世界末日将会在世界进入21世纪的时候来到，当然最后也其实什么也没有发生。
“his face frozen in the dark, the light from the TV leaping across his square glasses. He sat as if posed, with no agitation, no embarrassment, as if there were a perfectly mundane explanation for why he was sitting up, alone, at near two in the morning…”
Shield of feathers
因为世界末日并没有像父亲预料的那样到来，父亲很失望
“he slipped into despondency, dragging himself in from the junkyard each night, silent and heavy. He’d sit in front of the TV for hours, a black cloud hovering.
像往常冬天一样，母亲带上家人一起去Arizona，父亲恢复元气后，又一意孤行不顾回程会遇到的风雪天气，执意回家，最终重蹈覆辙又发生了车祸，这次是我昏迷了过去，回家后后背不能动了，整整一个月都失去活动的能力
“the paralysis spread lower, until it felt like I had a metal rod running the length of my back and into my skull.”
Shawn 回家了，父亲请他在工作上帮忙
“once someone said that Shawn wasn’t really bad, the he only got into brawls because he had a reputation for being unbeatable—for knowing all there was to know about martial arts, for fighting like a man who feels no pain—so every strung-out wannabe in the valley thought he could make a name for himself by besting him.”
哥哥shawn知道其实我需要接受“指压疗法”，他也真正帮助我恢复健康，但是内心里我希望是父亲拯救我的，希望父亲能证明他是个可以保护家人的英雄。
“or perhaps my father as I wished he were, some longed-for defender, some fanciful champion, one who wouldn’t fling me into a storm, and who, if I was hurt, would make me whole.”
Instinct
哥哥shawn说想暂时远离那些朋友，因此又住回了家里，哥哥外人在的时候就会蓄意挑衅别人，但是私下里又变了另外一个样子。一次和哥哥骑马，我的马突然发狂，并试图想把我甩下背，幸好哥哥及时救了我。
“at first he watched the younger boys with wary concentration, then he began to bait them. It wasn’t obvious aggression, just small provocation. He might flick off the boy’s hat or knock a soda can from his hand and laugh as the stain spread over the boy’s jeans. If he was challenged—and he usually wasn’t—he would play the part of the ruffian, a hardened “whatcha gonna do about it?” Expressing disguising his face. But after, when it was just the two of us, the mask lowered, the bravado peeled off like a breastplate, and he was my brother.
Fish eyes
在剧院里有个漂亮女孩子追求shawn，但shawn更像是训宠物一样对待她，
“she’s got fish eyes. They’re dead stupid, fish. They’re beautiful, but their heads’er as empty as tire.”—哥哥对她的评级，女孩对哥哥百依百顺，可哥哥只是戏虐的对女孩说“you have lovely eyes. Just like fish.” 只有我知道这句话代表着什么，女孩对哥哥来说只是个玩具，他不允许她跟其他男生讲话，甚至不让她跟朋友玩，独断的占有她。
妈妈说哥哥是 “he’s always protected angels with broken wings.”
一天晚上我忤逆了哥哥，他使用暴力让我屈服道歉
“i stood and quietly locked the bathroom door, then I stared into the mirror at the girl clutching her wrist. Her eyes were glassy and drops slid down her cheeks. I hated for her weakness, for having a heart to break. That he could hurt her, that anyone could hurt her like that, was inexcusable. I’m only crying from the pain, I told myself. From the pain in my wrist. Not from anything else.”
Silence in the churches
15岁的我身体明显感受到了变化，从女孩到女人的身体
“my body was changing, bloating, swelling, stretching, bulging. I wished it would stop, but it seemed my body was no longer mine. It belonged to itself now, and cared not at all how I felt about these strange alterations, about whether I wanted to stop being a child, and become something else.
父母和哥哥他们对女生的穿衣很保守，他们会议论那些有伤风化的穿衣，而对于处在青春期的我很迷茫，我一方面同意他们的说法，但不知所措，不知道一个得体的女人应该是什么样子的
“the speech would stay with me in a way that a hundred of its precursors had not. I would remember the words every often in the years that followed, and the more I considered them, the more I worried that I might be growing into the wrong sort of woman. Sometimes I could scarcely move through a room, I was so preoccupied with not walking or bending or crouching like them. But no one had ever taught me the modest way to bend over, so I knew I was probably doing it the bad way.”
Shawn 又一次打了我，因为我喜欢剧院里一个男生，开始化妆涂口红，他认为我变得放荡了。两个哥哥都对我说过我是特别的，tyler 说我就像教义里的先知，有敏锐的观察力，他的话让我相信我的内心有先知般的力量，这种力量是与生俱来，不可撼动的
但是 shawn 对我的辱骂和拳打脚踢让我认识到我个人的价值是建立在世俗的约束里的，这份价值如果我逾矩失礼则会被剥去
“suddenly that worth felt conditional, like it could be taken or squandered. It was not inherent; it was bestowed. What was of worth was not me, but the veneer of constraints and observances that obscured me.”
Tyler 凑巧回到了家，看到了一切，劝我离开家去读书
“there’s a world out there, tara. And it will look different once dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”
My feet no longer touch earth
我开始为大学的入学考试做准备，tyler也会帮我讲解一些知识内容。shawn 失足从高空坠落被送进了医院，头部内部受伤，我去医院看他，我的内心是纠结的，不知道要怎么面对他
“i stared at his face, at the bandaged wrapped around his forehead and over his ears, and was bled of my bitterness. Then I understood why I hadn’t come sooner. I’d been afraid of how I would feel, afraid that if he died, I might be glad.”
医生说脑部受伤可能改变了shawn的性情，但我知道其实应该并没有，只是我更愿意相信我的哥哥不会伤害我，他的暴怒仅仅是受伤的缘故
“reflecting on it now, I’m not sure the injury changed him that much, but I convinced myself that it had, and that any cruelty on his part was entirely new. I can read my journals from this period and trace the evolution—of a young girl rewriting her history. In the reality she constructed for herself nothing had been wrong before her brother fell off the pallet. I wish I had my best friend back, she wrote. Before his injury, I never got hurt at all.”
No more a child
父亲反对我上大学，但我并没有放弃，他见我固执不听话开始要我分摊家里开支，并直接对我说，如果不听就从家里搬走，靠自己租房住，我没办法搬走，我没有足够的钱，没有车，读大学也要交学费才行，因此在攒够钱之前我没办法直接反抗，但我也并不像以前那么顺从，开始内心抵触父亲的行为观念；我只能在失去我的父亲和独立之间选择。
“the lord has call me to testify. He is displeased. You have cast aside his blessings to whore after man’s knowledge. His wrath is stirred against you. It will not be long in coming.”
“i tried to imagine what future such a woman might claim for herself. I tried to conjure other scenes in which she and her father were of two minds. When she ignored his counsel and kept her own. But my father had taught me that there are not two reasonable opinions to be had on any subject: there is truth and there are lies. I knelt on the carpet, listening to my father but studying this stranger, and felt suspended between them, drawn to each, repelled by both. I understood that no future could hold them; no destiny could tolerate him and her. I would remain a child, in perpetuity, always, or I would lose him.”
Disloyal man, disobedient heaven
shawn和父亲总是吵架，shawn是我所有哥哥里最不服父亲并正面对抗的人，
“shawn was the only person I had ever seen stand up to dad, the only one whose forces of mind, whose sheer tonnage of conviction, could make dad give way. I had seen dad lose his temper and shout at every one of my brothers. Shawn was the only one I ever saw walk way.”
Shawn 又出车祸了，这次我看到他倒在血泊中，第一时间给父亲打了电话，父亲一如既往的要我把哥哥带回家，我并没有这么做，而是开车送去了医院，幸好这次伤并不是特别严重，这次事情让我明白了，我无法成为父亲想要的那样的女儿，就算我假意顺从，父亲早晚也会察觉出其中的谎言，把哥哥带到医院这件事我不后悔，只是觉得羞愧。
”the truth is this: that I am not a good daughter. I am a traitor, a wolf among sheep; there is something different about me and that difference is not good. I want to bellow, to weep into my father’s knees and promise never to do it again. But wolf that I am, I am still above lying, and anyway he would sniff the lie. We both know that if I ever again find Shawn on the highway, soaked in crimson, I will do exactly what I have just done. I am not sorry, merely ashamed.”
我被大学录取了，但是对于未来我是迷茫和害怕的
“not since y2k had I felt so certain that something terrible was coming, something that would obliterate everything I’d known before. And what would replace it? I tried to imagine the future, to populate it with professors, homework, classrooms, but my mind couldn’t conjure them. There was no future in my imagination.”
To keep it holy
上学的第一周我处处感到格格不入，生活上虽然大家都是信仰摩门教，但是他们并没有像我家那样虔诚，学习上有些吃力
“i’d always known that my father believed in a different god. As a child, I’d been aware that although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, believed in god’s power to heal; we left our injuries in god’s hands. They believed in preparing for the second coming; we were actually prepared. For as long as I could remember, I’d known that the members of my own family were the only true mormons I had ever known, and yet for some reason, here at this university, in this chapel, for the first time I felt the immensity of the gap. I understood now: I could stand with my family, or with the gentiles, on the other side or the other, but there was no foothold in between.”
Blood and feathers
上学一个月了，我的学业一团糟，日常上课或考试，我都毫无头绪，这让我想起了一年冬天我和luke 捡到的一只受伤的老鹰，野性是无法驯服的 “it couldn’t be taught to belong”
In the beginning
暑假回家，父亲要我去废品站帮忙，我不愿意，因为如果回到以前的生活，那么大学那几个月就好像从来没有发生过，父亲很生气，如果我不帮忙父母就会把我赶出去，无奈之下我打电话给了tyler，他的回应出于好意，但因为我当时过于敏感误解了，我别无他法，妥协帮父亲工作
“you’re slower than tar running uphill, but you get the job done without smashing anything.”
“in retrospect I’m sure he meant this literally, that he was asking how he could help, but my ears, solitary and suspicious, heard something else… I began to shake; I felt light-headed. Tyler had been my lifeline. For years he’d lived in my mind as a last resort, a lever I could pull when my back was against the wall. But now that I had pulled it, I understood its futility.
看电影碰上了 Charles 我以前的暗恋对象，工作完我们总会一起出去玩，我期待 Charles 能向我表白，或者牵我的手，但当他真的这么做的时候我身体本能的抗拒他，我害怕我会如父亲所说的那样被贴上“荡妇”的标签
“the instinct passed through me in the form of a word, a bold lyric, strong, declarative. The word was not new. It had been with me for a while now, hushed, motionless, as if asleep, in some remote corner of memory. By touching me Charles had awakened it, and it throbbed with life.”
Recitals of the fathers
父亲笼罩下的家和外面的世界，这两个间隔的点之间我无法找到中立点，所以我把他们明确分割，
“i couldn’t reconcile his world with mine so I separated them.”
在家是在家的老样子，放工回来和Charles在一起就是另外的样子；我的行为在父亲和哥哥眼里就是我变得傲慢瞧不起人了，他们想给我点教训，把我改回来，父亲总会让我做一些奇特的事情，试图以此让我明白我跟他们没有不同，哥哥则是在语言上刺激我，用贬低性的称呼刺痛我
“that was how dad and Shawn became comrades, even if they only agreed on one thing: that my brush with education had made me uppity, and that what I needed was to be dragged through time. Fixed, anchored to a former version of myself.”
“…it was an old taunt, blunted by overuse. He must have known I wouldn’t react on the site so he’d saved it, hoping that in front of Charles it might still have sting.
“nigger”哥哥用这个这个词叫我，当时我脸上满上灰尘，这个词让我想起了大学历史课上老师给我们讲述的黑人奴隶，他们受到的不公平，残酷的待遇，和黑人们为了争取自由而作出的抗争和牺牲。哥哥看我表情不对劲还以为他终于成功刺痛了我，然而他每一次这么称呼只让我更加确定语言不过是用来打压，禁锢我的手段
“i couldn’t articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fitting me in place that word transported me… I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it.”
“i had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either wilfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanise and brutalise others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.”
“the word and the way Shawn said it hadn’t changed; only my ears were different. They no longer heard the jingle of a joke in it. What they heard was a signal, a call through time, which was answered with a mounting conviction: that never again would I allow myself to be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand.”
Skullcap
我第一次吃医学药品是charles 给我的止痛药，那时我耳朵疼，视线模糊起来，怕光，吃完药半小时不到我的疼痛就消失了，可我仍然坚信医院药物这些都是邪恶的，只有我妈的草药才是真正治本的良药；charles说我有种从不求助他人的病态，上学课程困难我经常熬夜学习，自己搞不懂的不去问教授或同学，自己想破了头都难解开，我的代数想当然的挂了
“charles said my behaviour was self-destructive, that I had an almost pathological inability to ask for help.”
What we whispered and what we screamed
感恩节请charles来家吃饭，请他帮我补习代数。我想给他留个好印象，他来之前我细致地摆盘，这又惹得shawn不满
“it’s just charles. His standards aren’t high. He’s with you, after all.”
我顶了句嘴，然后就遭到了shawn的暴力。当时母亲在厨房，shawn打我的时候说是我在无理取闹，他这么说也不过不想要母亲过来帮我，我马上道歉。Charles来了之后哥哥依旧刻意捣乱，我生气的吼了一句，然后顺理成章的哥哥又找到借口揍了我，因为Charles在场，我不想让他看到我的软弱，不想我所有在他面前的伪装被彻底撕碎，我惹着疼痛像个疯子一样大笑，想让Charles觉得我和哥哥只是在胡闹，在开玩笑，
“i was laughing— a shrill, demented howl. I thought if I could just laugh loudly enough, the situation might still be saved, that Charles might yet be convinced it was all a joke. Tears streamed from my eyes— my big toe was broken—but I kept cracking.
Charles tired to carry me but I pushed him off and walked on the break, grinding my teeth to stop myself from crying out, while I slapped playfully at my brother.”
Charles 心疼我，想要帮助我，但对我来说更重要的是我的自尊，而向Charles袒露心声会代表我并不没有我想象中的那么坚强，所以我并没有感谢他，反而我把我内心对我父亲和哥哥的怨恨，愤怒发泄在了这个试图帮助我的人身上，我主动把他推开，拒绝了他的帮助。
“what was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my ability to lie convincingly to myself: to believe I was strong. I would never forgive Charles for knowing I wasn’t.”
“i became erratic, demanding, hostile. I devised a bizarre and ever-evolving rubric by which I measured his love for me, and when he failed to meet it, I became paranoid. I surrender to rages, wanting all my savage anger, every fearful resentment I’d ever felt toward dad or Shawn, at him, this bewildered bystander who’d only ever helped me.”
除了Charles，学校室友robin也主动试图帮助我，但是我都拒绝了，因为在我心里，我自己是坚不可摧，强大的，我固执的把自己困在自己创造出来的幻像中
“i believed myself invincible. It was an elegant deception, a mental pirouette. The toe was not broken because it was not breakable. Only an x-ray could prove otherwise. Thus, the x-ray would break my toe.”
shawn工作的时候提议休息去市区休息一下，我和他一起开车去，到了市区停车场，我看到了Charles的车，而我当时衣服头发脸都乱糟糟，脏兮兮的，我怕不小心碰上Charles让他看到我这副模样，我告诉哥哥我就在车里等他，哥哥当然看透了我，他逼我下车，我拒绝，他强力把我拖下来，接下来就是一拳一拳打过来，我的腿被他强力拉扯，我听到脚踝处咔嚓一声，我拉着轮胎的手抵不过他的大力，我就这样被他拖着走，我的上衣因为在地上摩擦滑到胸上，裤子因为shawn拉扯我的腿也被褪下来，我看着自己裸露在外面的内衣裤，我想拉衣物遮盖自己，但他把我的手按在我头上，我求他放开我。他放开了，我整理了自己的衣服，站起来明显感到脚踝已经脱臼了，我大声尖叫，人们开始往我们这边看，马上我开始发狂的笑起来，假装什么时候也没有发生。
当他晚上他跟我道歉了，在床上我反复想着发生的事情，一开始我还是认为如果当时我表现得更冷静一点，他会停手，这样的想法让我安心，反复告诉自己不要多想，事实就是如此；我内心一个微小的声音说着：不是的，shawn动手不是因为你做错了什么，是他用这种方式来羞辱你，而羞辱你能让他感到开心；我感到很混乱，不知道该相信什么，
“my humiliation was the cause of that pleasure. It was not an accident or side effect. It was the objective.”
“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.”
I’m from Idaho
教会的男孩子想约我出去，我都拒绝了，教会认为我可能不认同婚姻，因此主教请我去谈谈。我知道婚姻是上帝的安排，我也想要结婚生小孩，但是我做不到和异性亲密，内心会有羞耻的感觉。父亲和哥哥总会说女孩子要洁身自好，安守本分，15岁在剧院那段时间，哥哥跟父亲说听说我行为不太检点，父亲听了很恼火和母亲大吵起来，因为是母亲同意我去剧院表演的，尽管我什么也没有做，不知道为什么会遭受这样的指责，经过这次我明白“放荡”不是说你做了什么，而是别人主观认为你不纯洁，而这个别人就是我的哥哥，在他看来我是不纯洁的，那么我就是不纯的，除非我修正自己的行为来达到他的要求
“it’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there’s no greater power than that.”
鬼使神差的我告诉了主教关于我家的事情，主教很温柔的听完了我的故事，当我说到我暑假得回去，因为我没钱交房租了，主教劝我不要回去，如果回去也不要给父亲工作了，关于钱教会帮我出，我还是固执的拒绝了，至于钱的问题就听天由命吧。弄得到钱我就继续读书，没钱就回超市上班，雪上加霜的是我牙疼严重，我并没有钱拔牙。主教再次提出要帮我申请助学金，我不同意，因为父亲说过政府都是骗人的，给钱是要收买人，出卖灵魂，主教接着说教会出钱，不能要我因为钱就不读书了，都被我拒绝了。我努力工作，可是靠工资还是入不敷出。我卖了所有能换钱的东西，摆脱shawn帮我把马给卖了，圣诞回家过节我已经生无分文了，shawn给我了一百美元。我打了第二份工，主教还是继续劝我申请助学金，在robin的帮助下我最终还是申请了，终于钱的问题解决了。
A knight, errant
不用为钱发愁后我学习起来不再像那段时间那样心不在焉了，上心理学课程我第一次知道了:
抑郁狂躁型忧郁症（Bipolar Disorder）。这一型的忧郁症患者时而充满精力，可以连续工作几天几夜，极其兴奋，脾气暴躁，感官异常灵敏；随之尔来的是连续几个星期的低潮期，患者表现乏力，没精神，对什么都提不起兴趣，可以赖在床上一天不动并伴有厌食。
“depression, mania, paranoia, euphoria, delusions of grandeur and persecution.”
也学到了weaver家被围击的故事真相。得知真相后我感到愤怒，就因为父亲的精神疾病，连累到全家人，母亲的车祸，哥哥的脑震荡，luke腿部严重烧伤，我脊椎的问题等等，都是父亲的错。回到家我大声指责父亲，把怒气一股脑都发泄了出来，然后我跑回了学校，决定远离父亲，重新开始，做一个正常的人。我跟一个父亲肯定不会喜欢的男孩子约会，生病第一次去了医院，吃了医生给的处方药。
“i was so suffocated by rage, my words didn’t come out as words but as choking, sputtering sobs. Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the monsters in your own house?
The work of sulphur
父亲受伤了，全身严重烧伤，甚至部分地方皮都掉了露出了骨头
“his face and fingers took the brunt of the blast. The heat from the explosion melted through the shield as if it were a plastic spoon. The lower half of his face liquefied: the fire consumed plastic, then skin, then muscle. The same process was repeated with his fingers—the leather gloves were no match fro the inferno that passed over and through them—then tongues of flame licked across his shoulders and chest. When he crawled away from the flaming wreckage, I imagine he looked more like a corpse than a living man.”
Waiting for the moving water
父亲的命是保住了，但是伤势过于严重，就算伤口好了正常生活都难以想象，
“the explosion transformed him from lecturer to observer.”
shawn和新女友要结婚了，他还是老样子，对女朋友更多是绝对的控制，总会戏虐的探试她承受底线。我想找机会告诉哥哥的女友，劝她离开，但是话总是说不出口。我虽然已经看透了哥哥的意图和想法，但是我还是没办法鼓起勇气去向别人戳破。回到学校，跟nick在一起我本应该告诉他事实的真相，但也不想破坏我费力建立的新的生活，我被夹在两种生活之间，最后我向Nick提出了分手，还是选择了逃避。
“a week after the wedding I broke up with nick—callously, I’m ashamed to say. I never told him of my life before, never sketched for him the world that had invaded and obliterated the one he and I had shared. I could have explained. I could have said, “that place has a hold on me, which I may never break.” That would have got to the heart of it. Instead I sank through time. It was too late to confide in nick, to take him with me wherever I was going. So I said goodbye.”
If I were a woman
当初来这所大学我是想学音乐的，但是现在我对历史地理和社会现象文化更加感兴趣，在那个时代这些都是男人应该学的，
“this caused a kind of crisis in me. My love of music, and my desire to study it, had been compatible with my idea of what a woman is. my love of history and politics and world affairs was not…. I’d been wondering how I could be a woman and yet be drawn to unwomanly things.”
我问了历史老师，他告诉我“首先要知道你能做什么，再去想你自己是什么样的人。”
“first find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
父亲现在的样子：
“he could scarcely walk across a room without gasping for air, so damaged were his lungs. The skin on his lower face had regrown, but it was thin and waxy, as if someone had taken sandpaper and rubbed his mouth drooped, giving him the haggard appearance of a much older man. But it was his right hand, more than his face, that drew stares: each finger was frozen in its own pose, some curled, some bowed, twisting together into a gnarled claw.”
父亲活下来了，从此周遭乡亲更是尊敬父亲和母亲，敬佩父亲强大的生存意志力，佩服母亲起死回生的医术，父母的对神的信仰也越发虔诚。
Pygmalion: 只要充满自信的期待，只要真的相信事情会顺利进行，事情一定会顺利进行，相反的说，如果你相信事情不断地受到阻力，这些阻力就会产生，成功的人都会培养出充满自信的态度，相信好的事情会一定会发生的。
我有机会去英国剑桥交流学习，剑桥历史悠久，有着全球顶尖的学术水平，走进校园看到它富有古韵，宏伟壮观的建筑，我感到渺小，相比这里散发的优雅知性的气质，出生卑微举止粗鄙的我不由自卑。
剑桥大学的Steinberg 斯坦伯格教授是我的指导教授，他问我想要研究学习什么。因为从小父亲的偏激认知，我对世界的认知也是破碎不完整的，直到我离开家上大学才从父亲的思想迷雾里走出来，我的世界也因此发生了天翻地覆的变化，因此我想学习历史编纂学，想学习那些撰写历史的历史学家是怎样在偏见和无知中保持公正客观的。
“i knew what it was to have a misconception corrected—a misconception of such magnitude that shifting it shifted the world. Now I needed to understand how the great gatekeepers of history had come to terms with their own ignorance and partiality.”
读书的目的：
“i had been taught to read the words of men like Madison as a cast into which I ought to pour the plaster of my own mind, to be reshaped according to the contours of their faultless model. I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself.”
作者是个有天赋的可造之材，但是因为内心的不自信和对自己出生的自卑让她在通往未来的门前停滞，不敢迈过那道关。老师鼓励她：
“you are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to byu, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some light—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”
“the most powerful determinant of who you are is inside you,” he said. “professor steinberg says this is pygmalion. Think of the story, tara.” He paused, his eyes fierce, his voice piercing. “she was just a cockney in a nice dress. Until she believed in herself. Then it didn’t matter what dress she wore.”
Graduation
我大学毕业了，我得到了剑桥的盖茨奖学金，准备去剑桥读书了。
毕业之前父母来学校看我，父亲还是老样子，反对社会主义，认为二战是由犹太人的阴谋发动的，只为在乱世搞钱，世界末日就会在不久的将来到来。我没有去跟他争辩，只是静静地听着。
毕业后父母送我去机场，最后的告别，我看着父亲的表情，看到他眼中对我的亲情，不舍和恐惧，就像之前出车祸父亲看着坐在副座重伤的母亲一样。尽管我和父亲在思想上已经隔了几万里，但在感情上他始终是我的父亲，如果世界末日到来，他会不顾危险来接我回家，但是坐上飞机后，我和家之间就隔着汽车无法跨域的海了。
”it was only then that I glanced back and saw dad, still standing at the checkpoint, watching me walk away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumping, his mouth slackened. I waved and he stepped forward, as if to follow… that image of father will always stay with me: that look on his face, of love and fear and loss. I knew why he was afraid…. If you’re in america, we can come for you. Wherever you are. I’ve got a thousand gallons of fuel buried in the field. I can fetch you when the end comes, bring you home, make you safe. But if you cross the ocean…”
Hand of the almighty
在剑桥的第一堂课是讲以赛亚·伯林的积极自由和消极自由，
消极的自由：是指在没有人或群体干涉我的行动程度之内，我是自由的，用伯林的话来讲，是回答了“主体（一个人或人的群体）被允许或必须被允许不受别人干涉地做他有能力做的事，成为他愿意成为的人的那个领域是什么？”的问题；
“it is the freedom from external obstacles or constraints. And individual is dress in this sense if they are not physically prevented from taking action”
积极自由：是指源于个人要成为自己主人的期望，我希望我的生活和选择，能够由我本身来决定，而不取决于任何外界的力量，是回答了“什么东西或什么人，是决定某人做这个、成为这样而不是做那个、成为这样的那种控制或干涉的根源？”的问题。
“positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.”
对于作者来讲就是，虽然我已经从父亲专断疯狂的思想分割出来，但是出于习惯，恐惧我还是没有信心活在我选择的新的世界里。
关于女权主义：
在过去霸权男性主义为主流的情况下，男性为领导，女性则顺从，作家john sturat mill认为：woman have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.
哥哥richard 在攻读化学硕士学位，他妻子不是我父亲那样的狂热分子，是个再普通不过的人，因此在家哥哥总要在父亲古怪的极端思维和妻子之间来回转换
“i wondered how Richard was navigating the turbulent waters between his normal wife and his abnormal parents… he seemed in a state of constant transition, phrasing in and out of dimensions, unsure whether to be my father’s son or his wife’s husband.”
哥哥shawn还是老样子，因为妻子买错了饼干大发雷霆，大冬天把妻子丢下车，可怜的妻子穿着单薄的衣物跑回了家。我知道我要做的是给她空间，她现在肯定感到丢脸羞愧，至于让他认清shawn，并主动离开他则要等她自己想通，旁人干涉是没用的。
Fearfully and wonderfully made
回学校之前我看妹妹 Audrey，我们的相处少了亲密，她一直不敢跟我对视，妹妹现在有4个孩子，她也不相信学校，说不会让自己的孩子去上学，会在家里自己教他们，但是她自己根本就没读过什么书，很难想象她能教给自己孩子些什么知识。如果当初我没有选择离家，妹妹的生活就会是我的生活，而正如我离开之前一样，妹妹其实也活在哥哥shawn的暴力阴影下。
回到学校我开始敞开心扉，学会去接受新世界，不再自我束缚
“that term, I presented myself to the university like resin to a sculptor. I believed I could be remade, my mind recast. I forced myself to befriend other students. Then I set our to obliterate the barriers that separated me from them. I tasted red wine for the first time, and my new friends laughed at my pinched face. I discarded my high-necked blouses and began to wear more fashionable cuts—fitted, often sleeves, with less restrictive necklines. In photos from this period I’m struck by the symmetry: I looked like everyone else.”
一天我收到了妹妹的邮件，说她要告诉父母关于哥哥shawn的事，希望我能帮她，我的第一反应是不情愿的，我现在过得很好，不想直面家里不堪的情况。
“i felt she had torn me from one world, one life, where I was happy, and dragged me back into another.”
我回复妹妹希望她能等我回去，我们一起跟父母说，但妹妹没有等，第二天她就直接跟父母说了，并把我写给她的邮件也给母亲看了，因为我们两个都是哥哥的受害人。
母亲的心理历程：
最初不愿面对事实，否认现实。“it is painful to face reality. To realise there was something ugly, and I refused to see it.” 选择性相信事实，偏见性的保护施暴者，以达到自我保护。“sometimes I think we choose our illness, because they benefit us in some way.” 如今的母亲有自己的事业，再加上父亲因为受伤，在家不再强势，主导权转移到了母亲手上，所以现在的母亲不再胆小逃避，“i am stronger now, i no longer run scared…. We know better now. We can rewrite the story.” 母亲向我承认了她当初错了，作为母亲她应该要保护自己的孩子。
“when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she had been, she became that mother for the first time.”
现在母亲不再是过去那个逆来顺受，不能做主的柔弱女子，现在的她给了我力量让我面对自己的过去，和出生富足，受过正统教育，书香门第的同学们会主动聊自己的出身。
“i told them I’d been poor, I told them I’d been ignorant, and in telling them this I felt not the slightest prick of shame. Only then did I understand where the shame had come from: it wasn’t the I hadn’t studies in a marble conservatory, or that my father wasn’t a diplomat. It wasn’t that dad was half out of his mind, or that mother followed him. It had come from having a father who shoved me toward the chomping blades of the shear, instead of pulling me away from them. It had come from those moments on the floor, from knowing that mother was in the next room, closing her eyes and ears to me, and choosing, for that moment, not to be my mother at all.”
“the past was ghost, insubstantial, unaffecting. Only the future had weight.”
A brawling woman in a wide house
奶奶最终没有战胜癌症在医院过世了，我们都能感受到父亲的悲伤绝望，但不像女性的痛哭，父亲的表现更多的是通过愤怒。
“my father lost his appetite for the business. He started getting out of bed later and later, and when he did, it seemed it was only to insult or accuse. He shouted at Shawn about the junkyard and lectured mother about the management of the employees. He snapped at Audrey when she tried to make him lunch, and barked at me for typing too loudly. It was as if he wanted to fight, to punish himself for the old woman’s death. Or perhaps the punishment was for her life, for the conflict that had been between them, which had only ended now she was dead.” 
父亲在家各种对家人，员工动不动发火，母亲大部分时间都是忍让的，可忍让只让父亲变得更加不讲理，无理取闹。
Sorcery of physics
妹妹想我留下跟她一起对抗shawn，我并没有留下来，因为我也没有信心，我感到很惭愧
学校生活和家比起来要美好多了，让我有归属感，而这样的感觉又夹杂一点对家的愧疚，我感觉我背叛了我的家庭
“i preferred the family I had chosen to the one I had been given, so the happier I became in Cambridge, the more my happiness was made fetid by my feeling that I had betrayed buck’s peak.”
圣诞回家我看到哥哥的样子，老了很多，他的言行看上去他已经磨平了自己的棱角，心态也平和了，不再年轻气盛，做事莽撞了。我相信他变了，他提出一起兜风转转，我同意了，我们开车到了教堂，到停车场他突然问我是不是经常跟妹妹聊天，我说也没跟妹妹怎么说话，他放松下来很难听的骂妹妹，那个时刻我感到害怕，我一动不动站在那儿，这样也许他就不会出手了，这样我就能控制住局面
“it was crucial that I not look at him. As long as I kept my eyes on the spire, I almost believed he couldn’t touch me. Almost. Because even while I clung to this belief, I waited to feel his hands on my neck. I knew I would feel them, and soon, but I didn’t dare do anything that might break the spell of waiting. In that moment part of me believed, as I had always believed, that it would be me who broke the spell, who caused it to break. When the stillness shattered and his fury rushed at me, I would know that something I had done was the catalyst, the cause. There is hope in such a superstition; there is the illusion of control.”
The substance of things
我把shawn的事跟父亲说了，父亲说他不相信我，要我拿出确凿的证据，我拿不出，他就打电话给了shawn，让他过来跟我对峙，而全程中，母亲一句话也没说
“… then I was wailing—sobs erupted from somewhere, some part of me I had not felt in years, that I had forgotten existed. I thought I might vomit.
I ran to the bathroom. I was shaking from my feet to my fingers.”
Shawn 来了，挨着坐在我旁边的椅子上，我全身出于恐惧动弹不得，他轻轻打开我的手，塞了个东西到我手心，是匕首，带着血，闻起来是铁锈般血腥味。shawn轻轻说着：你如此聪明，昧昧，这个你用得到。因为你拿来用要比我拿来用在你身上更好点。” 我无法面对这样的情景，只能假装自己在做梦，在梦里我愉快的应和着他们的言语，就这样全家假装什么事情也没有发生。
“having decided I was dreaming, I did what one does in dreams: I tried to understand and use the rules of this queer reality. I reasoned with the strange shadows impersonating my family, and when reasoning failed, I lied. The impostors had bent reality. Now it was my turn. I told Shawn I hadn’t said anything to dad. I said things like “i don’t know how dad got that idea” and “dad must have misheard me,” hoping that if I rejected their percipience, they would simply dissipate. An hour later, when the four of us were still seated on the sofas, I finally came to terms with their physical persistence. They were here, and so was I.”
第二天早上我随便找了个理由就离开家了，开车路上路过shawn住的拖车，雪地上还能看到血迹，血之后我了解到是他的狗的。shawn接完电话就用匕首了结了它，用的是屠杀的手段，而不是日常用枪等更快的途径。很显然母亲并没有把我和妹妹的事情告诉父亲，那一天母亲的承诺让我感到安心，但并没有落实实际，我相信当时母亲的话是出自真心，可惜有心没实质，向风吹过而已
“they were her words. But hers or not, those words, which had so comforted and healed me, were hollow. I don’t believe they were faithless, but sincerity failed to give them substance, and they were swept away by other, stronger currents.”
West of the sun
“i had seen the earth tremble, felt the preliminary shock; now I waited for the seismic event that would transform the landscape.”
那晚的事只是首震，更强烈的地震还在后面。
shawn打电话给我，刚开始我们聊些家庭琐事，接着他直接威胁，辱骂我。我又打电话跟父母说这事，母亲说他不是有意的，父亲要我拿出证据。不久哥哥发邮件跟我断绝往来，邮件里大部分是对我的指责，说我是背后插刀的小人。父母也从哥哥跟我断绝关系起反过来指责我，父亲说我脑子不清醒，我不值得信任。母亲说我那晚的无名之火伤害了哥哥，哥哥完全有权利保护自己家人。
“reality became fluid. The ground gave way beneath my feet, dragging me downward, spinning fast, like sand rushing through a hole in the bottom of the universe.”
后来母亲又说那把匕首不是威胁，是哥哥怕他拿着刀的话会吓到你。一周之后母亲说当时根本没有什么匕首，你的记忆完全扭曲了。
我在巴黎学习了几周，去上网吧收到了妹妹的短信，妹妹说父亲找了她，说哥哥已经受到了主的赎罪，他从新做人了，因此她必须原谅哥哥，否则就会犯下更大罪恶。妹妹说她已经原谅哥哥了，之前她是受了我的唆使，而我是被撒旦的使徒路西法用恐惧控制了，因此妹妹决定也跟我断绝来往。不久不管其他兄弟姐妹，还是远亲都会视我为陌生人。
我承受这一切的反应是我开始认为自己疯了，不再相信自己的决定，自我怀疑，无条件听从别人的意见，我不再写日记。
我想找出自己没疯的证据，因此我写邮件给哥哥的前女友们，她们都证实了我没疯，但她们也只是片面之词，我很长时间都走不出自我怀疑的迷雾。
Four long arms whirling
我在哈佛读博士，我的生活被各种课程填满，闲下来就读书，我最感兴趣的主题就是家庭责任和社会责任的权衡。母亲给我发了邮件，父母要来哈佛看我。
charles说我：funny how you can change so much, but still sound the same as when we were seventeen.”
父母来看我是想让我回归主的怀抱，而我在想我要怎么迎合他们，接受父亲给我的台阶。
“i was ready to yield, even if it meant an exorcism… I could take it all back—blame Lucifer and be given a clean slate.”
和父母相处的时间，他们眼里的我是邪恶的，我眼里的他是疯狂的，就像堂吉柯德一样
“an adventuring knight is someone who’s beaten and then finds himself emperor.”—堂吉柯德
“a zealous knight astride a steed, charging into an imaginary battle, striking at shadows, hacking into thin air. His jaw is set, his back straight. His eyes blaze with conviction, throwing sparks that burn where they lay.”
“when life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?” “i willed myself to believe it— to believe there was no real difference between what I knew to be true and what I knew to be false. To convince myself that there was some dignity in what I planned to do, in surrendering my own perceptions of right and wrong, of reality, of sanity itself, to earn the love of my parents. For them I believed I could do arbor and charge at giants, even if I saw only windmills.”
我试图说服自己，这个世界本来就疯疯癫癫，我又怎么能评判出什么是失常呢？我做好准备不管父亲打算用什么仪式，我只要配合好就能重新赢回我的家人，对错不重要。但常年的研究学习，我发现自己无法像以前一样说服自己，我拒绝了父亲的橄榄枝
“everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yield now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
Gambling for redemption
我的精神出现了一些问题，梦游，做噩梦，无法集中注意，精神崩溃
“i couldn’t bear to string sentences into strands of thought, or to weave those strands into ideas… the thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.”
我决定回家一趟，没有告诉家人，到家首先看到了母亲，她很高兴看到我，在她帮我准备饭菜时，我打算用电脑，看到母亲的邮件，有关于我的，说我丢弃了信仰，而曾经跟我站同一战线的人，现在已然高呼母亲是英雄
“i had come to reclaim that life, to save it. But there was nothing here to save, nothing to grasp. There was only shifting sand, shifting loyalties, shifting histories.”
“i remembered the dream, the maze. I remembered the walls made of grain sacks and ammunition boxes, of my father’s fears and paranoias, his scriptures and prophecies. I had wanted to escape the maze with its disorienting switchbacks, its ever-modulating pathways, to find the precious thing. But now I understand: the precious thing, that was the maze. That’s all that was left of the life I’d had there: a puzzle whose rules I would never understand, because they were not rules at all but a kind of cage meant to enclose me. I could stay, and search for what had been home, or I could go, now, before the walls shifted and the way out was shut.”
我父母对我的爱是毋庸置疑的，但由父亲的偏执多疑领导的世界，是一个巨大的牢笼，想把我们每个人紧紧的锁在里面，在那样的世界里忠诚，真相，过去未来都是为这一目的服务的工具。我没在家呆太久就借口逃走了，离开后我给父亲发了一封充满愤怒，失望的邮件，反复说着我恨父亲，父亲是暴徒，是独裁者，从此代表与家庭割裂
“it’s full of rage, a fractious child screaming, “i hate you” at a parent. It’s filled with words like “thug” and “tyrant”, and it goes on for pages, a torrent of frustration and abuse.
That is how I told my parents I was cutting off contact with them. Between insults and fits of temper, I said I needed a year to heal myself; then perhaps I could return to their mad world to try to make sense of it.”
Stangers and pilgrims
在所有亲戚里，只有哥哥Tyler支持我，他决定与父亲对峙，父亲对这件事的态度就像当初我的情况一样，我多次跟哥哥道歉，把他卷进这场注定会失败的战役。
“our parents are held down by chains of abuse, manipulation… they see change as dangerous and will exile anyone who asks for it. This is a perverted idea of family loyalty… they claim faith, but this is not what the gospel teaches.”—tyler 给我发的邮件内容
我的精神问题好转后，我也成功取得了博士学位
Watching the buffalo
这些年母亲的药油生意越做越好，挣了不少钱，家里的房屋扩建了，看上去挺壮观的。我回到了爱达荷州，但没有直接回家，我给母亲发信息说能不能跟她单独见面，母亲拒绝了，她回复说作为一个妻子，她不会去见不待见她丈夫的人。
我的兄弟姐妹也分成两派，一派是在经济上依赖父母，另一派就是我和两个哥哥接受高等教育的
Education 
我已经很多年没有见过父母了，这些年我一直想找寻心中的平和，对父亲的怨恨一直在我心里
“i spent two years enumerating my father’s flaws, constantly updating the tally, as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified, I thought the strangling guilt would release me and I could catch my breath.
But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. I has nothing to do with other people.
I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I accepted, finally, that I had made the decision for my own sake. Because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it.”
以前的我有着分裂的两面，一面是父亲的女儿，另一面是我面对学校新生活的样子，当那天我向父亲说出shawn的真相，而父亲第一反应是给哥哥打电话，拒绝相信我那一刻起，父亲的女儿那一面就消失了。
“that night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.
You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education”