The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

she has an undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder and also, she’s a bitch, and also, I just don’t answer her calls.

It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful.

no one likes to feel see-through, particularly when you’re in your pajamas, so I try my best not to feed the dragon in my mind that sees everything no one wants it to see. It’s hard not to feed him, though; he’s learned to live off the crumbs of people, and people leave crumbs everywhere.

Sometimes it’s easier to play the characters we’ve been assigned.

I don’t know if there’s a PR team in heaven, but can you even imagine the crisis management team they’d need these days? What with people like these idiot girls with bright eyes and dull hearts, not a hair out of place but hearts in the wrong one. 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.

Then he pauses and glances down at me, each of us still frozen in our dance stances, and I hope the universes freezes and I’m forever stuck in the arms of the world’s hottest alcoholic, dancing on the grave of a bigot.

It’s not that I’m all that angry; it’s just that I’m tired of my narrative here, even from the people I love and who love me.

A surge of anger pulses through me as I panic she’ll fuck it up and make God sound weird or judgmental…make

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.

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

Fucking up and owning it is like catnip for me.

Ditto

The self-acceptance it takes to admit your flaws out loud to someone else is impressive, and I’d say downright admirable.

I don’t know why he’s driving when I’m the one from here, but there’s something about boys in cars and the way they hold the clutch…

His kisses are commas.

It’s like Maryanne knows how and when to preload people with tokens, and she does it with such foresight that when it’s time for them to regurgitate the loyalty or the yielding she so requires, they just do it. My sister can pull strings in people they don’t even know they have.

pain begets pain, shame begets shaming, and not being tolerated begets intolerance.

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,

famous names, like Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Maya Angelou… Then there’s Alfred Tennyson, Marianne Moore, Mary Oliver, and George Gordon Byron.

“It’s why everyone’s always banging on about vibes,” I go on. “That’s not some hippy-dippy new whatever we’ve just discovered—it’s people picking up on the tiny inexplicable things that they see without knowing they see it.”

our subconscious is the real boss. Our conscious actions might be the ship we’re sailing, but our subconscious is the rudder that steers it.

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

People who aren’t self-aware, people who haven’t lived their lives in the pursuit of truth, find that the truth is confronting if you don’t want to hear it. I think I represent to her a myriad of uncomfortable truths she just can’t afford to lean into, because her whole life depends so heavily on a false reality. People don’t tend to want those ruptured.