The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

Death is confronting for sheltered people because it fractures realities. To be fair, death is confronting for all people, probably. Sudden deaths, anyway. But the idea of death, when we look at it square in the eye, it unsettles us all. 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.

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.

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

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.

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