The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

Sam sees the world through this peculiar and raw lens of knowing there’s bad out there. He knows it, can see it, recognizes it—he might even acknowledge it, but it doesn’t seem to affect him. He just breathes deep and constant until the good he knows is coming comes.

When I was twenty, I started using La Mer’s Crème de la Mer. Before then, my skin was fine, good even…but once I started using that, it became great. And now I can’t unknow how great my skin can be. And this is how I feel about Sam.

This feels weird to me... A bit like a product placement

The nicest thing you can ever do for another human being is see them, and really see them, at that. To be understood is one of most base desires we as people have, and it was one that Oliver wasn’t only deprived of, but often quite deliberately denied.

You get this foreboding sense, somewhere deep inside of you…it’s guttural. Deeper than subconscious, more tangible than the speculative “universe” guiding you—maybe it’s a slip in time, or maybe it’s just pure instinct.

but he’s masking that fear with anger, because it’s easier to be angry than it is to be afraid. Anger is ours to wield against our attackers; fear is the lack of control we feel when we’re under siege, and believe me—Tennyson’s reality is now under siege.

Our conscious actions might be the ship we’re sailing, but our subconscious is the rudder that steers it.

And listen, we’re all sinful, but I think it’s a lie that all sins are equal. Not all of them are. Not all of them could be. I think sins are weighed by their intent and their destruction. Jean

And I think to myself, wouldn’t it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?

other?”

Grammar error. No opening quotation mark.

One week a year when they allowed themselves to be themselves, in love and free?

Alexis goes quiet again and thinks—truly thinks, actually—searching for an answer, almost like he’s trying to channel our dad. It’s the most conscious form of parenting I’ve ever seen pointed in my general direction.

“Before, you were a mirror where he saw something painful in and of himself, and then eventually, you became someone who could see him in a way he did not want to be seen.”

If that’s true, it would maybe mean not that he didn’t love me at all, just that he loved me in different language to my native tongue, and he never knew how to say it—which, admittedly, is still tragically sad, but is arguably less candidly cruel.

People who aren’t self-aware, people who haven’t lived their lives in the pursuit of truth, find that the truth is confronting if you don’t want to hear it. I think I represent to her a myriad of uncomfortable truths she just can’t afford to lean into, because her whole life depends so heavily on a false reality. People don’t tend to want those ruptured.

There is a beautiful optimism to him that isn’t born from sunny idealism or anything close to naivety, but rather a deep sense of hope that was forged in him as he climbed out of the flames of addiction.