The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

Because—honestly—neither party is great these days, and when you personalize something to the extent many people do in politics, any time anyone questions something the party does, it can feel like they’re questioning you, and that’s just plain unhealthy.

You can tell yourself you don’t even really want to be wanted by people like them anyway, but it isn’t true because the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.

I don’t actually know whether they did it to punish us, hide us, reform us, or avoid us.

But that’s not how pain works… You ignore it and it just sinks down deeper. It lodges itself in the corners of our memories, hangs off tree branches on Callawassie Drive. It hides under the pews in the back row of the church. It gets caught in a pile of sheets no one knew what to do with.

It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful. That the worst, most shameful day of my life to date would in turn become the most defining.

But there’s something about being around your siblings that makes you regress.

“Um—” She cringes. “I mean—we go to the same church.” She pauses. “I don’t think we know the same God.”

Not that the boy I think I like not-kissing me makes me brave, because I’m all for self-empowerment and being brave on my own. But there’s much to be said about being believed in.

“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”

“And I don’t think they’re not letting your mom into heaven because she didn’t believe in the God that modern Christianity claims to represent. I think he’s good.” I shrug. “And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.” Sam purses his mouth and nods once. “Your God sounds pretty cool, I guess.”

Debbie goes to church on Sunday. Debbie reads the Bible. She goes to Bible study and prayer group and the women’s meeting, and she thinks these things qualify her to tell people—perfect strangers, like Sam—about the gospel, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the only thing that qualifies you to talk about the gospel is admitting you need it.

I understand now that I’m older that it takes a true and deep faith in God to feel comfortable enough to ask and be asked such questions, but I don’t think many people like the depths.

And that’s okay to me—I think he probably is all good, all the time, but I think good is probably just a vaster, more nuanced construct than we grew up believing it to be.

I think God is good, even on the day of my father’s funeral. And I think he likes a redemption story.

I knew that it would have killed you if you knew I came to you and you weren’t there for me, so I let it kill me instead.”

“Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” I stare up at the big arch, which is my favorite part, I think. “Even though it’s broken?” “Yep,” he says quietly, and he’s looking just at me.

And suddenly, I have a dog in the fight. It’s small and stupid, like a Chihuahua or something that’ll probably die two minutes in, and it’s probably stemming from that fucking deep-rooted desire to be accepted by my mother, but I want to figure out who the fuck Alexis Beauchêne is.

he’s just the boy I love now, and I’d love to get the opportunity to text him one day to bring home some milk,

“Well, it doesn’t look like the house of a whore,” Oliver declares to no one in particular. I glance at him. “What does a whore’s house look like?” “I don’t know.” he shrugs. “A second-floor condo on the corner of Ocean and Alta?” Sam pauses. “That’s where you live.” Oliver gives him a wink.

Wait. I interrupt—I don’t even know who I interrupt—someone was talking who isn’t me, and it doesn’t matter who, because I talk over them anyway.