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From the start of adulthood, we have been waiting.
从成年伊始，我们就一直在等待。
We understood love intuitively long before it was ever a practical possibility.
在爱情还没有来临之前，我们就一直是凭直觉理解爱情。
We knew that it was bound up with a sense of being profoundly understood and finally able to say everything, without fear of judgement or censure.
我们知道，爱情与一种被深刻理解的感觉紧密相连，它能帮助人们说出一切，而不用害怕评判或指责。
Love was a two-person conspiracy against everyone else too dumb or leaden to get ‘it’, the true nature of being alive.
爱情是两个人针对其他人的阴谋，因为他们太笨或太沉闷而无法得到“爱情”——生命的真正本质。
It had to do with fancying someone totally and the amazingness that they might fancy you back, to the extent that you could do anything with them,
这与完全迷恋一个人有关，也与他们可能也会迷恋你的感觉有关，在某种程度上，你可以对他们做任何事，
like rest a finger inside their mouth and ask them to bite it hard.
比如把一根手指放在他们的嘴里，让他们用力咬。
We imagined from the first that love might be the best part of life – and we were not wrong.
我们从一开始就认为爱情可能是生命中最美好的部分——我们没有错。
In the name of love, we put ourselves in extraordinary situations.
以爱的名义，我们把自己置于特殊的境地。
We went out far more than we would have wanted.
我们与我们想要的东西偏离了太多。
We bought fancy clothes, we thought about our hair and worried about our spots, we drank intensely coloured cocktails,
我们买了漂亮的衣服, 我们想着我们的头发，担心着我们脸上的斑点, 我们喝着高浓度颜色鲜艳的鸡尾酒,
we ended up at small hours in alien parts of town, in the bedrooms of people we knew weren’t right but that seemed at least in some way to be an advance on the cause.
我们在凌晨时分到达了小镇的陌生地区 ，在我们认识的人的卧室里是不对的，但这似乎至少在某种程度上是一种进步。
We accepted dates with people we knew were problematic because we wanted not to ossify or grow too peculiar.
我们接受与我们认识的人约会是有问题的，因为我们不想变得古板或变得太古怪。
It wasn’t always right, in fact, it was mostly always wrong, but we kept our spirits up and told ourselves it would eventually be OK, as they kindly assured us it would be.
它并不总是对的，事实上，它大多数时候都是错的，但我们保持斗志，告诉自己最终会没事的，就像他们善意地向我们保证的那样。
But time passed; decades went by.
但时间流逝; 几十年过去了。
We got enmeshed in some very troubling situations that looked like love from the outside but were anything but.
我们陷入了一些非常麻烦的处境，表面上看起来像是爱，但实际上不是。
We spent far too long extricating ourselves and finding our voice.
我们花了太长时间来解脱自己，寻找自己的声音。
And at a certain point, we started to apprehend something whose terror we are still grappling with, probably late at night, because such things aren’t easy to look at in daylight:
在某一时刻，我们开始理解我们仍在努力抗争的恐惧，可能在深夜，因为这样的东西在白天不容易看到:
the probability that love isn’t, after all, despite our efforts and insights, ever going to come right for us.
毕竟，尽管我们付出了努力，也有自己的见解，但爱情终究不会降临到我们身上。
We are going to die without ever having known the love we long for.
我们没有理解我们所渴望的爱情的模样，最终走向死亡。
The reasons are multiple and in their ways entirely banal.
原因是多方面的，而且从他们的角度来看，完全是老生常谈。
Because our past is too complicated; our lack of trust too deep; we are too ugly; we are too unconfident; we don’t meet the right people; our luck is too slim; hope feels too risky.
因为我们的过去太复杂; 我们太缺乏信任了; 我们样子太丑了; 我们太不自信了; 我们没有遇到合适的人; 我们的运气太差了; 想要的太冒险了。
Though we try, harder than we try at anything else, we can’t do this thing.
尽管我们努力，比做任何事情都努力，我们还是得不到爱情。
It won’t work out for us.
爱情不会降临到我们身上的。
The ambassador for this sombre grand truth might be an objectively rather innocuous disappointment:
客观上讲，这一重大事实可能可能代表无伤大雅的的失望真相:
perhaps one more date that didn’t in the end – despite a very hopeful stage around dessert – go as it should, or one more person who didn’t call back.
也许下一次约会还是没有遇见爱情——尽管在吃甜点的时候很有希望——就像它应该的那样，或者又有一个人没有回电。
They, the angel of romantic death, couldn’t have known what they were doing to us, and certainly didn’t mean to (we can’t hate them for a moment, unfortunately),
他们，让爱情死亡的天使，不可能知道他们对我们做了什么，当然也不是故意的(不幸的是，我们一下也不能恨他们)，
but through their lack of desire, they initiated us into an idea which now threatens to blow our sanity.
但由于他们缺乏欲望，他们让我们产生了一种想法，这种想法现在威胁到我们的理智。
