首先来分享一段原文吧:
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 understood: the precious thing, that was the maze. That’s all that was left of the life I’d had here: 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.
这是Tara在对父母彻底绝望时痛彻心扉的感悟。她在读博期间因为哥哥Shawn霸凌的事被家人异化和孤立,精神崩溃一蹶不振时试图回家与父母和解,却心寒的发现父母实际全都背弃,拒绝接纳现在的她。上文中提到了她曾经做过的一个噩梦,梦里的迷宫,材质特殊,是父亲在地下室的屯粮物资(我想这也是父亲在她潜意识里的符号),她在迷宫里疯狂的寻找出口,为了找寻所谓的珍贵的东西。而当下,她终于意识到这珍贵的东西就是迷宫本身,是她的父母留给她的——她可以选择回家,把迷宫当做上帝的馈赠,从此像儿童一样遵从她不理解的规则,继续“享受”这相爱相杀的亲情;也可以决绝的离开,认清迷宫是她前半生踟蹰不定、尚未逃离的牢笼,立刻出发寻找出口,获得内心的自由。