The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

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?

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. “I always felt he allowed you to be sent away because he wanted more for you than what was on offer for you here,”

Crying

I roll my eyes at him. “You love me blindly.” “No.” He shakes his head. “I love you very much with my eyes open. You’re an absolute fucking know it all, but you’re brilliant.” He shrugs.

“I say this with all due respect: I love you, but I don’t think you knew your dad all that well.” I don’t know why that undoes me how it does, but suddenly I’m crying, and there’s a new kind of stinging in my heart than the old one I was used to. Could that be true? 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,

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.

There is a curious form of grief that I find emerging within me, beyond that whole thing where my father died thinking I’d done something terrible to someone else, which is a thought that still feels like a knife twisting in my chest. But now as well, there’s this strange little haunting of what could have been.

though I’ll admit that now being loved back how Sam loves me back, I can never tell whether I love to feel seen how he sees me, or if it’s sort of a pain.

“I have something for you,” Oliver tells me as he reaches in the pocket of his Varsity bomber, then offers me whatever’s in his closed fist. Cautiously, I stretch out my hand, and then he drops in a four-month sobriety chip.

“So, you had the best help…” I nod toward Penny. “No.” Oli shakes his head. “The best help would be in the form of my know-it-all little sister who actually, unfortunately, does know it all.” He gives me a pointed look before he softens it again. “But I had a close second in the man who loves her.”

Fuckming crying