随着年龄增长，我们有了各种身份，需要应对的关系也越来越多：与父母、与同学、与朋友、与同事、与伴侣、与子女……因为同他人相处的时间日益增多，我们独处的时间越来越少，甚至渐渐丧失了独处的能力。
如果给你一个独处的机会，你会感到孤单、寂寞、不知所措吗?你知道该如何与自己相处吗?
今天的文章“Living on My Own, and Taking Control of My Life” (《掌控人生，从一个人住开始》)，原文作者为Sian Norris，译者杨瑞，原文和译文刊登于《新东方英语》杂志。
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
—Michel de Montaigne
世界上最伟大的事，是一个人懂得如何做自己的主人。
—米歇尔·德·蒙田
只有身处独属自己的空间，完全不必理会他人，不受外界打扰，我们才有机会深入思考，倾听内心的声音，与自己对话，想清楚人生究竟要如何度过。
Those first few days of being by myself in my flat—decorated with my choice of colours, with my books on the shelves and my pictures, hung by me, on my walls—were disconcerting (使人不安的). I walked around the few rooms, wondering what to do now. With no one to move around, no one to talk to, no one to ask me how my day had been, I didn’t know where to put myself. The life I had once assumed—the one with a partner and a house and a family—had vanished. Here I was, facing a new future, living by myself.
公寓装修用的是我喜欢的色彩，书架上摆的是我的书，墙上挂着的是我的照片，而且是我自己挂上去的。但最初一个人在公寓的那几天，我感觉焦躁不安。我在为数不多的几个房间里徘徊，不知道要做些什么。没有人在身边走动，没有人和我说话，没有人问我今天过得怎么样，我不知该如何安放自己。我曾经假设的生活——有一个伴儿、一所房子、一个家的生活——化为了泡影。走到了这一步，我要面对的是崭新的未来，一个人的生活。
That trepidation (惊恐), that anxiety, soon turned into a feeling of liberation.
这种惊惶和焦虑很快就转变为自由之感。
Living alone gave me a sense of freedom I hadn’t known I’d craved. In my own flat, with my own space, I started to write with a renewed energy. I’d spent years writing the first draft of a novel—years filled with interruptions and squeezed space. Within months, I had finished a book.
一个人生活给我带来了一种自由的感觉，这种自由感是我一直渴求却不自知的。我在属于自己的公寓里，有了自己的空间，于是重新打起精神，开始写作。我曾花费几年的时间才完成一部小说的初稿——那几年里我经常被打断，个人空间遭到挤压。现在，几个月内我就写成了一本书。
By taking control of my physical space, I opened up a new emotional space for myself. I was working harder and better than I’d ever worked before. My self-image changed with the move, too. I started calling myself a writer. In Woolfspeak, I had found my “room of one’s own (见Tip)” where I could carve out a space for my creative self.
我通过控制物理空间为自己开辟了新的情感空间。我比以往工作得更努力，工作得更好。自我形象也随着此次搬家改变了，我开始称自己为作家。用伍尔芙的话说，我发现了“自己的房间”，在这个房间里我可以为富有创作力的自己开辟一片天地。
Tip:
此处指英国著名作家弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙(Virginia Woolf, 1882~1941)的一句话：“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” 伍尔芙是意识流文学代表人物，被誉为20世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋，代表作包括小说《达洛维夫人》(Mrs. Dalloway)、《到灯塔去》(To the Lighthouse)及随笔《一间自己的房间》(A Room of One’s Own)等。