The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

There are lots of things you don’t do if you’re from South Carolina, though. You don’t disobey your parents. You don’t skip church. You don’t be gay.

The way people there conflate their political alignment with their personal identity. Being a Republican or being a Democrat in America is for so many people akin to racial identity.

The idea that it ends—that it all ends—that everything you spend your life doing and building toward one day amounts to actually nothing the second you take your last breath.

God, I hate South Carolina.

Think about how being a “Christian” has so little to do with acting Christ-like now, especially these days, and especially in America.

And I don’t know what I believe. I think I believe in God, but not the one people like Maryanne and my mom claim to know.

Girls like them who bat their eyes as they pick and choose from the Bible to create a world they’re comfortable to exist in.

“I just—some things don’t add up, you know? Like, he’s supposed to be this big God of love or fucking whatever and then he sends everyone to hell if they don’t believe in him?”

why a good God would make a world so fucked up.

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.

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

This is what music exists for. This is why the birds sing. This why the tide pulls and the water falls. It’s why the sun rises and it’s why the moon hangs there all ghosty white.