When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into the likeness of a person. That person, or that likeness of one, had belonged. I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end — if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.
小时候，我等待思想成熟，等待经验积累，等待抉择坚定，等待成为一个成年人的样子。那个人，或者那个化身，曾经有所归属。我属于那座山，是那座山塑造了我。只是随着年龄的增长，我开始思考，我的起点是否就是我的终点——一个人初具的雏形是否就是他唯一真实的样貌。
As I write the final words of this story, I’ve not seen my parents in years, since my grandmother’s funeral. I’m close to Tyler, Richard and Tony, and from them, as well as from other family, I hear of the ongoing drama on the mountain — the injuries, violence and shifting loyalties. But it comes to me now as distant hearsay, which is a gift. I don’t know if the separation is permanent, if one day I will find a way back, but it has brought me peace.
当我写下这个故事的最后几句话时，自从外婆的葬礼之后，我已经多年没见过父母了。我跟泰勒、理查德和托尼联系密切，从他们以及其他家人那里，我听说了山上正在上演的戏剧——受伤、暴力和来回变换的忠诚。但现在这些对我来说都成了遥远的传闻，他人的馈赠。我不知道分离是否是永久的，不知道是否有一天我将找到一条回家的路，但这种分离给我带来了平静。
That peace did not come easily. 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.
平静来之不易。我花了两年时间列举父亲的缺点，不断地更新记录，仿佛将对他所有的怨恨、所有真实发生过的和想象出来的残忍与忽视一一列举出来，就能为我把他从生活中剔除的决定辩护。我以为，一旦证明我的做法是正确的，我就会从那压抑的负罪感中解脱，松一口气。
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. It has nothing to do with other people.
但辩护并不能战胜负罪感。再多的针对他人的怒火也无法减轻这种负罪感，因为负罪感从来都与他们无关。负罪感源于一个人对自身不幸的恐惧，与他人无关。
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 learned to accept my decision for my own sake, because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it.
当我彻底接受了自己的决定，不再为旧冤耿耿于怀，不再将他的罪过与我的罪过权衡比较时，我终于摆脱了负罪感。我完全不再为父亲考虑。我学会为了我自己而接受自己的决定，为了自己，而不是为了他。因为我需要如此，而不是他罪有应得。
It was the only way I could love him.
这是我爱他的唯一方式。
When my father was in my life, wrestling me for control of that life, I perceived him with the eyes of a soldier, through a fog of conflict. I could not make out his tender qualities. When he was before me, towering, indignant, I could not remember how, when I was young, his laugh used to shake his gut and make his glasses shine. In his stern presence, I could never recall the pleasant way his lips used to twitch, before they were burned away, when a memory tugged tears from his eyes. I can only remember those things now, with a span of miles and years between us.
当父亲还在我的生活中，极力想控制我的生活时，我透过冲突的迷雾，用战士的眼光审视他。我看不出他身上温柔的品质。当他站在我面前，高高在上，愤愤不平时，我忘记了自己小时候，他笑起来全身抖动、眼镜闪闪发亮的样子。我再也无法忆起他的嘴唇在烧毁之前，曾经怎样愉快地抽搐，当一段回忆让他热泪盈眶的时候。现在我只能记起那些往事，我们之间已经相隔千山万水，时光一去不返。
If there was a single moment when the breach between us, which had been cracking and splintering for two decades, was at last too vast to be bridged, I believe it was that winter night, when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, while, without my knowing it, my father grasped the phone in his knotted hands and dialed my brother. Diego, the knife. What followed was very dramatic. But the real drama had already played out in the bathroom.
我们之间的裂痕已经持续破裂了二十年，如果有那么一刻，让裂痕最终扩大到无法修补，我相信是在那个冬夜。当我盯着卫生间镜子里自己的映象，在不知不觉中，父亲用扭曲的双手抓起电话，拨通了哥哥的号码。迭戈，刀子。接下来发生的事非常戏剧化，但真正的戏剧早在卫生间就已上演了。
It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place.
戏剧上演时，不知为何，我无法再穿过镜子，将十六岁的自己释放出来代替我。
But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.
但我和父亲之间的隔阂不仅来自时间和距离。它源于自我的改变。我已不是当初那个被父亲养大的孩子，但他依然是那个养育了她的父亲。
Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed — how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance — I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house.
在那一刻之前，她一直在那里。无论我看上去发生了多么大的变化——我的教育如何辉煌，我的外表如何改变——我仍然是她。我充其量不过是内心分裂的两个人。她在里面，每当我跨进父亲家的门槛，她就出现。
You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.
你可以用很多说法来称呼这个自我：转变，蜕变，虚伪，背叛。
I call it an education.
而我称之为：教育。
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.
那天晚上我召唤她，她没有回应。她离我而去，封存在了镜子里。在那一刻之后，我做出的决定都不再是她会做的决定。它们是由一个改头换面的人，一个全新的自我做出的选择。
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