The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

wanted to know that he wouldn’t grow bored and find someone else. I thought, in a brief moment of unease, about the trampoline that I had wanted so desperately as a child—that maddening, all-consuming desire to possess something that I didn’t have—and how quickly I had tired of it, how soon after I was looking for something new to covet.

I continued to struggle to think of what to ask for. It wasn’t that my desire for things had faded, but rather that I felt overwhelmed by choice, panicked that I was forgetting something that I really wanted, worrying that there was always something better that I just hadn’t thought of yet. I was frequently anxious, feeling as though whenever I wasn’t requesting something I was wasting my opportunity.