一名华裔美国青年与母亲的对话（中英文对照） | 心声时间

Our mothers, our mothers. I told my friend once that no one breaks our hearts like our mothers. I’m sure my mother would say no one breaks her heart like me. Is there any other relationship so full of expectations and dreams and disappointments? If there is, I do not think I want to know. I write this article thinking of my mother, trying to respect her in my own way. I give her first look and veto powers for this essay, and I hope that is enough for her to not look at me with that frown of disapproval. Why reveal so much of yourself, I can already hear her saying. Why reveal so much of Us? Why do I want to expose my pain and hurt and anger to the world? 

我们的母亲，我们的母亲。我曾经告诉过我朋友，没有人能像我们的母亲一样伤我们的心。我也肯定我的母亲会说没有人能像我一样伤她的心。在这世界上，还有任何一种关系像母女一样，充满了期盼，梦想，和失望吗？如果有，我不觉得我想知道。我在写这篇文章时是想着我的母亲的，尝试着用我的方式来表达对她的尊敬。她是我这篇文章的第一个读者，我也跟她说如果她不愿意我不会发表，我希望这足以使她不用那种不满意的表情看着我。我几乎可以听见她在跟我抱怨为什么我要公开那么多我们的东西，为什么我要将自己的悲伤、痛苦和愤怒写在所有人都能看到的地方？

Much of my life is incomprehensible to my mother. My choices are odd, my opinions odder still. My career path is wobbly and crooked, I feel like money is my enemy, and I shun the idea of common sense. I don’t want to protect myself, and I believe in abolition; or rather, I need to believe in abolition. 

我人生的很大一部分对我母亲来说是不可理解的。在她看来，我的人生选择很奇怪，我的意见更加奇怪。我的职业道路危险而不寻常，我好像把金钱当成我的敌人一样，完全不接受所谓常识的概念。我完全不在乎自己的安全，居然会去相信要废除警察监狱。或者说，我觉得我需要相信废除警察监狱。

Abolition is about making a world in which prisons do not exist, a world where prisons do not need to exist because they are made redundant by the more effective methods we would use to address harm and injustice. 

废除警察监狱意味着建设一个监狱不再存在，也不再需要存在的世界，一个存在着比监狱更好更有效的应对伤害和不公的世界。

Abolition is often called an impossible dream, and I know my mother would agree. However, I don’t believe in abolition because I am optimistic. I am a pessimist at heart; I don’t believe in the good of humanity, the potential of technology, or the capacity of our institutions. I often asked myself and others, how do people keep going in this world knowing of the violence, abuse, and trauma that plagues every corner in every country? 

许多人会说废除警察监狱是一个天方夜谭，我也知道我母亲也是这样认为的。但是我相信警察监狱应当废除不是因为我是个乐观主义者。正相反，我从内心就是个悲观主义者，我不相信人性本善，不相信技术进步本身会带来社会进步，也不信任我们的各种社会机构和制度。我常常自问，也常常问别人，为什么当人们知道世界上每一个国家的每一个角落都充斥着暴力、恶行和创伤之后，还能像没事一样继续生活下去？

Life isn’t that bad, others told me, it is bearable, and it will get better. These answers have always felt like lies. Covid19 continues to rage around the world for its third year and still there does not appear to be a way to stop the rampant spread and death (Roe 2021; Yang et al., 2022). Climate change is steps away from irreversible and catastrophic damage (DeConto, 2021), and when I imagine the future, it is a destroyed, death-plagued wasteland. 

别人常常对我说，人生也没那么坏，忍忍就过去了，未来总会更好，但在我看来这些回答听起来就像是谎言。全球新冠疫情已经到了第三年，但阻止它传播和致死的办法我们还是连影都没有（Roe 2021；Yang et al. 2022）。气候变化已经到了不可逆转的灾难的边缘（DeConto 2021），当我想象未来时，我脑中出现的总是一片破败和死亡笼罩的荒原。

Moreover, I know that there are lives understood as too terrible to imagine, lives coping with disabilities and trauma,  lives that are not considered ‘bearable’ (Beaudry, 2020). I know that my life is all too easily understood as unbearable. Sometimes I wonder, would the good moments in my life be enough to justify living? Or would I be sorted in Ontario’s new Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Track Two program, grouped with others encouraged to commit suicide because their lives are imagined as too painful to survive, even as they search for ways to keep living (Favaro, 2022)?

此外，我也知道有些人的生活是不可想象地恐怖，比如那些不得不经历创伤或与残障共存的人，有时那种生活会不被社会认为是“可以忍受”的（Beaudry 2020）。我知道我自己的人生在许多别人看来就已经是不可忍受的。有时我不由得想，我人生中快乐的时刻能给我足够活下去的理由吗？又或者我应该在安大略省最近的安乐死计划里被归于“第二类”，因为在社会想象中我们这些人的人生是如此痛苦，应该被鼓励去自杀，即使我们中的许多人仍然在寻找活下去的办法（Favaro， 2022）？

I turn to unconventional ways of understanding the world because I am too disillusioned to believe in anything that currently exists. I am too jaded to want anything less than a miracle. bell hooks, a professor and author well known for her writings examining class, race, and gender, wrote in “Theory as Liberatory Practice” that "I came to theory because I was hurting - the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend - to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away” (1994).

我之所以去寻求不寻常的认识世界的方法是因为我对那些现有的办法已经绝望了。我是如此悲观，以致于我觉得只有一个奇迹才能让我得到救赎。以其关于阶级、种族和性别问题的著作知名的bell hooks教授在她的《作为解放手段的理论》一书中写道：“我成为理论家是因为我感到痛苦，因为我心中的痛苦是如此之重，若非如此我就无法继续活下去。我开始理论研究是因为绝望，因为我想找个办法来认识和解释我身边和心中发生的一切。最重要的是，我需要有个办法来让我不再痛苦。”（1994）

I turned to writings on love and brighter possibilities—like abolition—that did not shy away from the dark realities of my life in order to find a form of hope I could believe. These stories offered me hope and a “perhaps,” though not without struggle, and that is much more plausible to me than any other potential. 

对于我自己来说，我写作关于爱和更美好的未来（比如警察监狱的废除）的文章，也不讳言我自己人生中的黑暗现实，是为了给予我自己一个我可以相信的梦想。这些故事给予我希望和一种通过努力或能变成现实的“可能性”，这在我看来要比别的什么都更靠谱。

Yet the very theory that I reach for causes my mother’s head to spin and her brow to furl. She has asked me to walk away from theory, from what she sees as causing me more pain. She has asked me to shield my eyes from triggering content and despairing stories. But even if I shielded my eyes, I still cannot forget, and all I would be able to see is that future wasteland without hope. 

但正是这些我赖以获取希望的理论让我母亲感到头晕皱眉。她叫我不要再去碰什么理论，因为她觉得那些东西加重了我的痛苦。她叫我不要去看那些让我不适的内容和让我绝望的故事。但即使我不再去看，我也忘不了我看过的那些，我所能想象的未来也还是会是一片绝望的废土。

I do not know how to make her understand why I can’t look away, why looking away from pain is also looking away from hope; I can only ask her to help me keep looking. This request is not something I imagined being able to make when I was younger. It is only in the past few years that we have reached a place of openness and trust. It is partly for this reason that I want to write about our conversations, to document these years, to recognize how far we have come.

我不知道该如何让她明白我为什么不能不去看这些东西，为什么回避痛苦也意味着回避希望，我只能请求她帮我继续探索下去。这个请求在我年纪小些的时候是不可想象的。只是经历了最近这几年我母亲和我才能有这么多的开诚布公和互相信任。这也是我想在这里记录下我们的对话的原因之一。我想以此记录下我们生命中的这些岁月，来庆祝我们这些年的成绩。

So I will start, and hope that you will read. 

于是现在我要开始叙述了，希望你会愿意读下去。

There was a period a few years ago when the memories of my life became too much for me. To be frank, it still is too much for me, and it is not my intention with this essay to dig into that pain. This essay is about my mother and me, our conversations, our disagreements, and our love. 

若干年前有一段时间，我过去的痛苦记忆让我觉得无法忍受。说实话，现在我也觉得那些痛苦难以忍受，但这篇文章不是为了说那些东西。我写这篇文章是为了记录我母亲和我的对话，我们的争执，和我们的爱。

So I want to talk about how for a long time, I ignored my memories and pain and hid them from my mother, even as I longed for her to come and tell me she’d figured it out. I kept busy, kept tired, kept myself from thinking. I worked, I climbed, I danced, I went out 7 nights a week. I wore myself out so I could sleep without dreaming, I ran on fumes and coffee, and still I could not stop thinking anymore. 

所以我想要说的是在很长的一段时间里，我尽力让自己忘却我的痛苦记忆，也向我母亲隐瞒了它们，虽然我那时盼望着她能发现并且告诉我她能看到我的痛苦。我让自己保持忙碌和疲惫的状态来避免思考。我努力工作，努力攀岩，努力跳舞，一周七天晚上都在外面度过。我耗尽了自己的精力以避免晚上做噩梦，但仍然不能阻止我想起过去。

Interacting with my mother, and really with the world itself, became too painful. I cut myself off in desperation, hoping that if I could find a place to hide, I could hold off the inevitable and get through the days. It didn’t really go too well, as the isolation only caused me to spiral out further, drowning in self-pity, despair, and loneliness. I suppose I was grieving, or that’s what my therapist suggests. 

我和我母亲以及整个世界的交流变得越来越痛苦，我绝望地将自己和外界割裂开来，希望如果能找到一个隐藏自己的地方的话我能尽量推迟不可避免的崩溃，熬一天算一天。结果当然是失败的，我的自我孤立只让我在自怜、绝望和孤独中陷得越来越深。我当时觉得我是在经历悲伤，至少这是我的心理治疗师说的。

My mother was confused, she didn’t understand what was going on, and I know she struggled not to ignore all my wishes and come barreling through the door of the apartment at the address I refused to tell her. In her restraint I could see her trying, in ways she had never before, and eventually, I told her things I never thought I would, things that I had hidden from her for decades. 

我母亲感到非常困惑，她不知道我到底在经历什么，我也知道她在挣扎着不去违背我的意愿冲进我不愿告诉她地址的那间公寓里。从她的自制里我可以看到她比以前任何时候都更努力地给予我尊重，所以最后我告诉她了那些我从没想过会对她说的事情，那些我向她隐瞒了几十年的事情。

I had heard too many stories of parents not accepting their kids, too many stories that end in accusations of lying and rejection. I know how lucky I am that she sat, and waited, and promised she would keep trying to listen, to understand. It is here that our conversations really started, when I could see how much she tried to connect with me in the ways that mattered to me. If this was a movie, that is where it would have ended.

我听到过太多家长不愿接受自己孩子的故事，太多亲子故事最终终结于家长指控孩子撒谎，拒绝孩子的倾诉。我知道自己是何等幸运，有一个愿意坐下来等我，承诺她会倾听的母亲。从这里我们的对话才真正开始，我真的能感到她是如此地希望能按照我想要的方式与我沟通。如果这是一部电影的话这就是个大团圆结局了。

We did not suddenly become different people. We were still people with the same ideas and faults and misconceptions. Moreover, I am not the kind of person who would be the protagonist of any such movie. My life does not fit in that genre of movies. So instead of hope and happiness, I felt apprehension, fear, and doubt. Many of our conversations ended up in screaming matches and to be honest, they sometimes still do. 

但我们并没有立刻变成不同的人。我们仍然带着原来的想法，原来的错误和原来的误解。此外，我其实并不是一个能做这种电影的主角的人。我的人生不能被拍成这种温暖人心的电影。我与我母亲的对话并没有带来希望和幸福，而是担心、恐惧和自我怀疑。我们的许多对话终结于互相高声对骂。说实话即使现在也还是常常是这样。

She wants to understand me but our memories are different, our experiences are different, and there is nothing easy here. Most of our conversations revolve around how to live our lives, our needs and our wants and our choices. Or rather, most of our conversations go something like this:

她想要理解我，但我们的记忆是不同的，我们的人生经历是不同的，所以这种理解并不容易。我们大部分的对话是关于如何度过我们的人生，我们的需要、愿望和人生选择。换句话说，我们的对话常常是这样：

Mother: No one else I know has chosen such a difficult way of living. You see problems everywhere and refuse to be a part of so many things that will help you get ahead. There are so many jobs you won’t do, so many careers you find distasteful, and you keep reading these negative articles. You are hardly surviving. What if I am gone? What will you do then?

母亲：我从来没见过像你这样自找麻烦的人。你整天愤世嫉俗，不愿意做很多能让你获得成功的事情。有那么多种工作是你拒绝做的，有那么多种职业是你觉得不好的，然后你还整天读那些负面的文章。你都几乎养不活自己。我死了以后你怎么办？到时候谁养你？

Me: I will be fine because I am not just hardly surviving. Your idea of surviving and my idea of surviving are not the same. Your idea of surviving is effortless, peaceful, safe. I don’t even know what to do with a life like that. I know how to solve a crisis, how to make sacrifices and make do. I know how to get myself out of a bad situation and figure out where to go next. I know how to have bad days and I know how to have better days. I know this isn’t the life you imagined for me, I know I have chosen a difficult life, and I have accepted that.

我：我没事的，因为我并不是“几乎养不活自己”。你所认为的“活着”和我所认为的“活着”不是一个概念。你觉得人活着就应当不用努力，生活平静安全。但我不愿意过这样的生活。我知道如何应对危机，如何放弃不必要的东西去度过难关。我知道如果我遇到困境时应该怎么解救自己并寻找出路。我知道如何度过幸运和不幸的岁月。我知道这不是你想要我过的人生，我知道我选择了一条比常人更艰难的道路，但我接受这一点。

Mother: How can I let you suffer? How can I help you not suffer? I feel like I need to work harder so I can help you live the life you want without suffering, but I’m tired.

母亲：我怎么能让你去受苦呢？我有什么办法能让你不去受苦呢？我觉得我要更努力工作才能让你过你想过的人生而不受苦，但我真的很累了。

Me: Those are not things you can help me with. Please do not ask me to live the life you see as happy. I will not be happy. The person who will be happy in that life is not me. Please listen. I need you to just listen.

我：你没有办法让我不受苦的。请别再要求我过你觉得幸福的人生了，我在那样的人生里不会幸福的。有的人会享受那种人生但我不是那种人。请听我说，我只需要你听我说。

Mother: Why do you prioritize others over our family? Can you focus on happiness for us, just us? This despair at the world, this search for a purpose, wouldn’t it go away if your purpose was us?

母亲：为什么你把陌生人放在自己家人之上？你不能就专注于我们，就我们两人的幸福吗？你这种对世界的绝望，这种对人生意义的追寻，如果你的人生意义就是我们俩的幸福的话不就完了吗？

Me: I cannot live that way. I do not know how to say it without it hurting but that is not enough for me. I need more from life, I need to dream for a better tomorrow, not just for us, or I will not know how to go on. I need to theorize better possibilities, imagine potential futures where we have paths and choices that are not so bleak. How else will I make the hurt go away? What helps me get up in the morning, justifies all the pain I’ve already lived? I am greedy, ambitious, egotistical. 

我：我不能那样生活。我不知怎么说能不伤你的心，但我觉得那样不够。我需要有更大的人生意义，我的人生需要有更多东西，我需要能梦想一个更美好的明天，一个不仅仅属于我们而且也属于每一个人的明天，要不然我就无法活下去。我需要去思考有哪些更好的可能，去想象一个我们有比现在更好的出路和选择的未来。如果不这样我怎么能让自己不再痛苦呢？是这种希望让我每天早上能起床，让我觉得我经历的痛苦并非没有意义。我是一个贪婪，有野心，自我的人。

I need my life to have meaning beyond just us and our family, beyond my personal comfort and success, I need to be right and good in the world. Can I become someone who is satisfied with personal comfort? Can I force my brain to stop thinking, to stop agonizing, to stop theorizing? I do not know, please don’t ask me to try.

我需要让我的人生有超出自我以及家庭的意义，超出让我得到舒适和个人成功的意义，我要做一个对世界有益的人。我能做一个满足于个人舒适生活的人吗？我能强迫自己去不要思考，不要痛苦，不要思想吗？我不知道，但请不要强迫我去做这种人。

My choices make her worry, but I do not know how to make other ones. She wants me to stop hurting myself by reading books and articles that send me into waves of despair. In this case, she and my therapist mostly agree. I know the words of self-care, of taking care of yourself first, walking away when things get too heavy. But I am that thing, I am too heavy. How do I walk away from myself? How do I forget my life? 

我的人生选择让我母亲很担心，但我不知道我如何能选择别样的人生。她想要我不要读那些让我绝望的书籍和文章，因为觉得我读那些是在伤害自己。在这点上她和我的心理咨询师所见略同。我知道什么是自我照顾，知道要照顾别人先得照顾自己，当负担过于沉重时应当暂时放弃的道理。但我的负担来自于我自己。我怎么能放弃自己呢？我怎么能忘记我自己的人生呢？

Memories intrude, emotions boil over, and I am not in control. Similarly, she disagrees with me on abolition. I understand her objections; she wants me to be safe. She wants the people who might harm me to be far away from me and she wants to believe that bad things will never happen to me again. Nevertheless, I know the safety that she imagines does not exist. 

我的记忆会侵入我的生活，我的情绪会激动，我不能控制这些。类似地，我母亲在废除警察监狱的问题上不赞成我的观点。我能理解她的反对理由：她想要我能得到安全，她想要把那些可能伤害我的人关起来，这样她就可以确信我不会再受伤害。但我知道她所想象的那种安全是不可能存在的。

The monsters she imagines are not the dangers I fear. I know it is all too easy to hide violence and malice behind a veneer of respectability, and I know that if we put hidden violence on trial against my ugly pain, I will be the one condemned instead. The only thing I can do is turn to theory. How do we prevent harm before it begins? How do we make sure acts of harm are not just well hidden, they are less common? 

她想象的危险和我害怕的危险并不是同一种东西。我知道暴力和恶行很容易被用冠冕堂皇的理由掩盖，我知道我自己的痛苦不是支持这种隐藏的，系统性的暴力的理由。我唯一的出路是理论思考。我们怎么能在伤害发生前防范它呢？我们怎么能减少伤害的发生而不是让伤害更难被发现呢？

Are there other people looking for answers? What do they say? Do they see a way out? To me, abolition is not about sympathy or forgiveness. I don’t care to forgive, nor do I care if anyone else forgives. Rather, it is about how the current system does not protect, does not heal, does not offer anyone anything but cold vengeance. 

有别的人也在思考这种问题吗？那些人是怎么说的？那些人找到了出路吗？对于我而言废除警察监狱不是一个关乎同情或者原谅的问题。我不想原谅谁也不想要求别人原谅谁。问题在于目前的司法系统不能保护受害者，无助于伤害的疗愈，除了冷酷的复仇之外什么都提供不了。

I don’t want vengeance, I can’t eat vengeance, vengeance does not give me hope. And so I keep looking in search of solutions that might protect, might heal, might offer something more than just vengeance. I keep walking beside my mother’s fears, and she keeps worrying.

我不要复仇，复仇不能吃，不能给我带来希望。所以我一直在寻求能保护人们，能带来疗愈，能带给人们复仇之外的东西的解决方案。我继续向我母亲害怕的方向走去，我母亲继续为我担心。

I know what choices my mother wants me to make, but when I think about following them, I can only imagine the pain that will well up again with nothing to soothe it, telling it to go to sleep, whispering that I’ll find the answers soon. I’m so sorry mother, but I can’t make myself believe in that life I don’t know how to live, that future I cannot imagine, and I won’t be able to let you stop worrying.

我知道我母亲希望我做出什么人生选择，但我一想到要按她想要的选的话就只会让我的痛苦得不到任何疏解，就没有办法能让我的痛苦得到暂时压抑，没有办法得到解决问题的希望。母亲我真的对不起，但我真的没办法说服自己去过你想要的但我不知如何能让自己接受的那种人生，我也没有办法能让你不再担心。

I know others pity my mother for having such a strange daughter. I try to shove down the small voice that whispers that maybe she feels the same. I want to yell at the world, I’ve thought about this, I agonized about this, for what reason do you tell me I’m wrong? Many times I have given people my carefully stacked worldview, and right after they say they’ve never thought about these things before, they try to knock it over because their gut tells them that I’m wrong. 

我知道许多人觉得我母亲有我这样的怪女儿很可怜。我想尽办法让我自己不去告诉自己我母亲可能也是这么想的。我想质问世界，我想过这些，我为此痛苦过，凭什么我的选择就是错的？有很多次我跟别人解释我的世界观，别人说自己从没这么想过然后就想反驳我因为那些人直觉觉得我是错的。

Sometimes the despair reaches deep, leaves me questioning if I should accept the inevitability of that future wasteland. In moments of self-pity I see my life as full of disappointment, a bleak place. But those moments are getting fewer and farther in between and I hope they become farther still. 

有时我真的很绝望，让我自问是否该接受那未来的废土的不可避免。在我自怜时我觉得我的人生就是一串的失望，就是一片绝望。但这种自怜的时刻已经越来越少，越来越不频繁，我希望它们未来会变得更少。

In moments of joy I feel as if my life is richer than all the rest, with commitment and assurance and purpose. I feel a confidence in myself, in my choices, that what I’m doing is right and good in the world. I feel that the most when my mother and I have moments of understanding and acceptance. When she can look at my life and see something to be proud of instead of something to grieve. When she looks at the bell hooks quote I send her and say that she doesn’t understand, but she reads it again and again until it starts to make sense. 

在开心的时刻我觉得我的人生比谁的都要充实，有理想，有信念，有目的。我对自己和自己的选择感到自信，相信我做的是对的和对世界有益的。在我母亲和我有互相理解和互相接受时我尤其感到这种喜悦。当她能够觉得我的人生是值得骄傲而不是应当感到悲哀的时候，当她读了我发给她的bell hooks的名言，说她不理解，但反复读了几次直到理解时。

In those moments I feel like as bad as things can get, at least my mother is trying, at least she’s already come so far. Those moments make the world make sense for just a second, and in that second I understand that this is why we keep going. Those moments are not possible without these conversations—these often painful and frustrating conversations where we both make missteps and mistakes. I want my mother to be proud of me, of my choices and my life. Sometimes, I think she is. Sometimes, I think that’s enough.

在这些时刻我觉得即便我们有那么多不同，至少我母亲在尝试理解我，她已经做到了很多。这些时刻让我觉得世界是有意义的，让我理解为什么我们要前行。没有我们的对话，没有那些常常充满痛苦和烦恼，我们双方都犯了很多错的对话，这些时刻就是不可能的。我想要我母亲为我，为我的选择和我的人生感到骄傲。有时候，我觉得她是这样想的，而我觉得这就够了。