The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

There are a lot of kinds of love in the world, and not all of them make sense all of the time. The way love was delivered to Oliver, full of conditions and hoops to jump through and lies to abide by, being loved and being hurt were two sides of the same coin. How that translated in the way he loved me was this: He would never force me to tell him something; he’d never push me; he’d never challenge me in a serious way; he would never do anything to ostracize me or make me uncomfortable. He loved me a dysfunctional amount, and love and dysfunction are a peculiar pairing that flavor everything with a specific brand of contradiction. See, Oliver loved me so much—too much, you might even say—that he’d rather leave me hurting if it meant it hurt me less at the time.