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.

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.

It was crazy, actually. Behind them and beside them. It was this almost otherworldly feeling, where you’re so small, but not in a way that’s degrading or upsetting, but the fact that you’re on the planet at the same time as something so big and so significant, I don’t know—it was strangely life-affirming? Like you’re not alone in the world. And I get that same feeling when I’m near Sam Penny.

I think there’s something romantic and poetic about how the light creeps up on the darkness that’s buried the horizon and blasts it away all gentle and blushy pink.

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?