The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

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.

Unfortunately, by “away” I mean just back to the car, not to France or like, a cabin in woods where we have crazy around-the-clock sex, but it is away from my mother, which is something enough, I suppose.

Our relational pattern, until now, would have him believe that he can say or do anything he wants to me and we’ll just…rubber-band back to being who we were before it happened. He is right—kind of. But elastic wears over time. It stretches more, gets thinner, loses its shape. Even when you want it

to snap back to what it was, it doesn’t always work like that.

For many years, the idea of someone riding in on a white horse, defending and reclaiming my honor, was how I envisioned my redemption story playing out. The music would swell in the soundtrack of my mind and years of pain would fall off me like scales and I would be different because my savior made me feel clean again; but life, it seems, and hearts as well, are not that simple.

Wondering and questioning why things are the way they are, not accepting the present and permanent—they’re all really solid ways to slow down progress.

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