The sharp, rhythmic throb in my left pinky toe is currently the only thing keeping me grounded as I stare at the stack of ivory-colored boxes in the back of the closet. I just slammed it into the corner of a heavy oak dresser-a stupid, avoidable collision-and the physical pain is a welcome distraction from the psychic itch of looking at my own history of failures. Or rather, my history of curated successes that felt like failures. My name is Ella L.-A., and for 26 years, I’ve made a living as a court interpreter. My entire professional existence is dedicated to the precise, clinical translation of other people’s intentions, ensuring that a ‘maybe’ in one language doesn’t become a ‘definitely’ in another. But when it comes to the objects I buy for others, the translation is always skewed. It’s never about them. It’s always, hauntingly, about me.
“I’m looking at a receipt from 6 months ago for a gift I never actually gave. It was an expensive, leather-bound edition of a book I’ve never finished, intended for a cousin who mostly reads digital thrillers. Why did I buy it? Not because he wanted it. I bought it because I wanted to be the kind of cousin who gives leather-bound books. I wanted to see myself reflected in his eyes as a woman of literary depth, a person who values the tactile weight of 456 pages of high-bond paper.