I'd stopped taking my medication only a few days earlier. It had just seemed crazy to be taking antidepressants in Italy. How could I be depressed here?

几天前，我才停止服药。在意大利服用抗忧郁剂似乎不太对劲。住在这里怎可能觉得抑郁？

I'd never wanted to be on the medication in the first place. I'd fought taking it for so long, mainly because of a long list of personal objections (e.g.: Americans are overmedicated; we don't know the long-term effects of this stuff yet on the human brain; it's a crime that even American children are on antidepressants these days; we are treating the symptoms and not the causes of a national mental health emergency . . .). Still, during the last few years of my life, there was no question that I was in grave trouble and that this trouble was not lifting quickly. As my marriage dissolved and my drama with David evolved, I'd come to have all the symptoms of a major depression—loss of sleep, appetite and libido, uncontrollable weeping, chronic backaches and stomachaches, alienation and despair, trouble concentrating on work, inability to even get upset that the Republicans had just stolen a presidential election . . . it went on and on.

一开始我并不想靠药物治疗。我长时间反对服药，主要因为一长串个人的反对理由（诸如，美国人用药过度；我们不清楚这些东西对于人脑的长期影响；近来连美国孩童也吃起抗忧郁剂，这是一种罪过；我们治疗的是症状，并未能根治造成全国心理健康危机的原因……）。尽管如此，生命中的过去几年间，毫无疑问，我陷入极度困境，而这困境短期内无法解除。随着婚姻瓦解，与大卫之间的戏剧性发展，我有了严重忧郁症的所有征状——失眠、食欲减退、丧失性欲、不能自已地失声痛哭、慢性背痛与胃痛、疏离与绝望、难以专心工作，甚至对共和党抢了总统大选一事无动于衷……等等，等等。

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.

你在森林中迷失的时候，有时得花一阵子时间才明白自己迷了路。很长一段时间，你可以说服自 己只是偏离步道几米距离，随时都可能找到返回步道起点的路。而后夜幕一再降临，你仍不清楚自己的方位，此时不得不承认自己已远离步道，甚至不再知道太阳从哪边升起。

I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological?(Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

我承担我的抑郁，就像它是我生命中的一搏，事实也确是如此。我研究我自己的抑郁经验，尝试解开原因。这一切沮丧源自何处？是不是心理上的原因？（父母的过错？）或只是暂时性的，我生命中的倒霉时刻？（离婚事件了结后，抑郁是否会随之而终？）是不是遗传？（有多种称谓的忧郁症，在我的家族传了好几代，带着它哀伤的新娘：酗酒问题。）是不是文化原因？（一个后女性主义时代的美国职业女性尝试在紧张疏离的都市世界中求得平衡而导致的结果？）是不是星座的缘故？（我之所以如此哀伤，是不是因为我是敏感的巨蟹座，主宫全由反复无常的双子星座控制？）是否和艺术有关？（搞创作的人难道不都是因为超敏感且与众不同而为抑郁所苦？）是否和进化有关？（我身上是否带有远古人类试图在野蛮世界求生存而残存的恐慌？）是因果报应？（这些悲伤时刻是否只是前生作恶多端的结果，在解脱前夕最后阶段的阻碍？）是荷尔蒙作祟？饮食问题？哲学问题？季节性？环境造成？我是否也感染了全球对上帝渴求的症状？是内分泌失调？或者我只是需要性关系？