Wasted 经典段落摘译（之一）

Talent, great sensibility, acuteness and courage. 这是我个人对本书的形容词。 完全被作者折服，这是生命力和智性同等强悍的女性。 —— Quotes from Marya Hornbacher “Wasted” “I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death.” 我想杀死那个内在的我。这一事实鬼魂一般萦绕心头，使我日夜不安。当你意识到你恨自己到如此地步，当你意识到你不能忍受你是谁，而且这深深的敌意是你多年以来行为的动机，你的大脑不大能接受这个事实。它非常努力试图避免这一悲剧的发生；它会尝试着，以最后一搏的努力，使你余下的某一部分得以存活，重塑另一部分的你。这就是我所认为的，不同于那些深受痛苦折磨之人的自杀愿望，对他们来说死亡像是解脱；不同于我后来想实施的的自杀计划，那是为了逃避痛苦。这是一种谋杀自己的愿望；“杀死”的涵义太过温和。这是一种信念：你理应忍受漫长酷刑的折磨，暴烈的死亡。 “There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.” 事实上，那是一种源于一无所有的可畏的自由。 “We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.” 我们将骷髅视作女神顶礼膜拜，似乎她们能教会我们不再渴求。 “Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in school,athletics,artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school,drop out,quit jobs,leave lovers,move,lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather,we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule, most of us never really believed we were any good in the first place.” 记住，有进食障碍的人通常聪明而富于进取心。我们是可怕的完美主义者。我们常常在学业、体育、艺术方面取得出色成就，也常常一言不发地退出游戏。拒绝上学，退学，辞职，与恋人分手，搬家，破产。我们厌倦了表现优异；或者说，我们厌倦了被视为优秀的人。普遍的规律是，我们之中的大多数从不认为自己有任何出类拔萃之处。 “You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things. You forget that you used to feel all right. You forget what it means to feel all right because you feel like shit all the time, and you can't remember what it was like before. People take the feeling of full for granted. They take for granted the feeling of steadiness, of hands that do not shake, heads that do not ache, throats not raw with bile and small rips of fingernails forced to haste to the gag spot. Stomachs that do not begin to wake up in the night, calves and thighs knotting in muscles that are beginning to eat away at themselves. they may or may not be awakened at night by their own inexplicable sobs.” 你开始忘记生活的本来意义。你忘记事情。你忘记了你曾经觉得一切都好。你忘记了什么叫作“一切都好”因为你感到一切都是扯淡，而且你不记得之前的生活是什么模样。人们视饱足感为理所当然。他们也把这些当作理所当然的：踏实的感觉，不颤抖的双手，不疼痛的头，不因胆汁和指甲撕裂的细小伤口的疼痛而被迫中止谈话的咽喉；不在半夜因饥饿而醒来的胃，小腿和大腿的肌肉拧结在一起，开始吞噬它们自己。它们也许是，也许不是，在夜间被它们自己不可理喻的抽泣惊醒。 “I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.” 我开始用虚无而不是存在作为丈量事物的单位。 “And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.” 就这样，我闯入穿衣镜，一步步走进地下世界，那里黑白颠倒，食物象征贪婪，四壁被放大镜覆盖，死亡是荣耀，而有血有肉的生命是软弱。走上这条路如此容易。回头却万分艰难。 “Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live?” 永远，永远不要低估欲望的力量。 如果想要活着的欲望足够强烈，你就能活下去。最大的问题，至少对我来说，是：如何确定我是否想活下去？ “Hatred is so much closer to love than indifference.” 恨比漠不关心更近于爱。 “It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.” 根本来说，它是一团矛盾：一种对权力的欲望，却剥夺了你全部的权力；一个强力的手势，却榨干了你所有的力量。 “The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions.” 厌食症患者的行为潜藏在一种令人震惊的幻象之下，即她可以逃避肉体，以及与之相关的情感之领域。 “Death is a fascinating thing. The human mind continually returns and returns to death, to mortality, immortality, damnation, salvation. Some fear death, some seek it, but it is in our human nature to wonder at the limits of human life, at least. When you are sick like this you begin to wonder too much. Death is at your shoulder, death is your shadow, your scent, your waking and dreaming companion. You cannot help, when sleep begins to touch your eyes, but to wonder: What if? What if? And in that question, there is a longing, too much like the longing of a young girl in love. The sickness occupies your every thought, breathe like a lover at your ear; the sickness stands at your shoulder in the mirror, absorbed with your body, each inch of skin and flesh, and you let it work you over, touch you with rough hands that thrill. Nothing will ever be so close to you again. You will never find a lover so careful, so attentive, so unconditionally present and concerned only with you. Some of us use the body to convey the things for which we cannot find words. Some of us decide to take a shortcut, decide the world is too much or too little, death is so easy, so smiling, so simple; and death is dramatic, a final fuck-you to the world.” 死亡是令人心醉神迷之物。人类的心灵一而再，再而三地回到死亡，回到必死的生命，永生，定罪与救赎。有人恐惧死亡，有人追寻它，但至少在我们人类的本性之中，都存在着探寻生命极限的渴望。当你病入膏肓时，说明你已渴求得太多。死神蹲在你的肩头，它是你的影子，你的气息，你清醒和入梦时的伴侣。当睡意开始合上你的眼睛时，你却不能停止这样的思考：万一呢？万一呢？这一问题中有一种渴望，近似于恋爱中的少女对爱的渴望。病魔占据了你每一个念头，像爱人一样在你耳畔呼吸；病魔站在你的肩头，望向镜中，攫住你的身体，每一寸皮肤和血肉。而你任凭它控制了你，用粗糙的手掌，令人颤栗地触摸你。 没有任何人、任何事物会离你如此之近。你永远不会拥有一个如此细心，如此善解人意，如此无所不在，待你一心一意的恋人。 有些人用身体表达无法形诸语言的的讯息。另一些人决定走捷径，决定世界对他们来说太多或太少，而死亡如此容易，如此笑意盈然，简单明了；它又如此戏剧化，像是对世界竖起一个最后的中指。 “Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to a number of their effects. The two most basic and important: the pure adrenaline that kicks in when you're starving—you're high as a kite, sleepless, full of a frenetic, unstable energy—and the heightened intensity of experience that eating disorders initially induce. At first, everything tastes and smells intense, tactile experience is intense, your own drive and energy themselves are intense and focused. Your sense of power is very, very intense. You are not aware, however, that you are quickly becoming addicted.” 进食障碍是种瘾。你会对它的一切效果渐渐痴迷。最基本和最重要的两点：在你饥饿时急剧分泌的高纯度肾上腺素——让你像风筝一样飘飘然，兴奋得夜不能寐，充满了疯狂的、不稳定的能量—— 以及进食障碍最初带来的高度密集的感官体验。最开始，一切尝起来，闻起来都是鲜明的，触感是敏锐的，你自身的动力和能量是紧密而专注的。你对权利的感知非常，非常强烈。然而你不知道，你很快就对此上瘾了。 “For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.” 长久以来，我以为激情的反面是死亡。我错了。激情与死亡潜藏在彼此之中，你中有我，我中有你。跨过炽烈如火的生之边境，便是地下世界。我可以回溯这条路，它带我经过的炎荒之地，空气炙热得令人胸口灼痛。我没有回头。我快马加鞭，终于跨过边界，那边是一个沉默而冰冷的空间，如此寒冷，像水银一样燃烧着冷冷的蓝色火焰。 “The term “starvation diet” refers to 900 calories a day. I was on one-third of a starvation diet. What do you call that? One word that comes to my mind: “suicide.” “饥饿节食法”这个词指每日摄入900大卡。我的摄入仅有“饥饿节食”的1/3。你把这叫什么？一个字眼跃入我的脑海：自杀。