Conditions Of Will Jessa Hastings Quotes

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?

But then this thought floats through my head: You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

Silence with him is five fifteen in the morning before the sun’s up and it’s still dark but the birds are singing. He’s the heavy quilt you pull over your head when it’s too cold and too early to wake up. He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing. He’s the way water runs and bubbles over stones in a stream. He’s a quiet mind.

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

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.

He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing.

That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.

Conscious feelings are present on the surface, and you make decisions around them, but subconscious feelings exist under the surface, and they dictate your decisions too, arguably even more so, but often you only realize that in retrospect.

their treatment of you has nothing to do with you.

I take a photo in my mind, let history rewrite itself for a second. It doesn't erase it, but it scribbles over it a bit in a louder color.

You can tell yourself you don’t even really want to be wanted by people like them anyway, but it isn’t true because the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.

Sam doesn't do anything, doesn't say anything-it's not his fight, he doesn't need to-but the light casts his shadow on me and I know he’s there and I'm not by myself, which is a very powerful thing to feel when you've felt by yourself most of your life.

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.

His kisses are commas.

People read the Bible wrong. It’s a diary of normal people, like us, from thousands of years ago, trying to make sense of the God they’d heard of from their ancestors. They didn’t write it for us to read it now. And I think people read it without the true social or historical context, and they bring their own instead.

You want to get over someone quickly?” I stare over at him. “Feel everything. Every shred of loss, everything you’re missing now that they’re gone. On lonely nights, be lonely. When you’re sad, look it in the eye. Every single memory I had of Storm, I ruminated on them for weeks on end and it felt like I fell into a fire, and then somehow, one day, after months of pain and months of forcing myself to feel all of it, I saw a picture of him and I didn’t feel like I was going to die anymore.

He tried to smother the memories of our childhood. I tried to pull them apart.

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.

To death and for free.

Our eyes catch, and there's that strange new warmth again that's so unfamiliar and so welcome, all at once. It's to not feel alone in the world, I think— the world can feel so lonely sometimes. Most of the time, I suppose.

And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.

So maybe it's the cosmicness of it, or maybe it's the way his mouth feels against mine-like some sort of soul resuscitation, like Sam Penny is a heart-stretch put on the planet to reinstill faith back into mankind so we have something worthwhile to write the poems about.

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.

mean—we go to the same church.” She pauses. “I don’t think we know the same God.

You’re a cunt.

I think the only thing that qualifies you to talk about the gospel is admitting you need it.

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

Sam’s face softens. “You asking me to fall in love with you?” I smile coyly. “Maybe.” “Maybe I will.” He shrugs. And then he looks serious. “You’ll watch me?

how many people just light up because you walk into the room? One in a lifetime, two maybe?

You can have my—fuck—have whatever you want. Have everything.

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

He drops his head as he laughs, then looks back up at me and the light from the sun make his eyes look like little stars-or maybe the light's just coming form inside him?

I don't think we know the same god

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.

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.

It’s been about thirty seconds since I met him, and I’m enamored with him.

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.

I walk up the stairs and Sam’s behind me. He moves quietly but stays close, and I get the distinct feeling that maybe he is the adult version of a nightlight. At least, that’s what he’s becoming to me.

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.

He gives me a long look, then kisses me again. It's not rushy or urgent. It's not a bookend kiss, he's not signing off, he doesn't say goodbye-he just kisses me, hands in my hair, soft and melty, and the he slips out of my room. His kisses are commas.

Sam sees the world through this peculiar and raw lens of knowing there’s bad out there. He knows it, can see it, recognizes it—he might even acknowledge it, but it doesn’t seem to affect him. He just breathes deep and constant until the good he knows is coming comes.

I do try to switch it off, try to look at everything like a person who hasn’t taught herself to see the world stripped back to its sinew and bones, but sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard not to keep seeing things that are there in plain sight once you’ve taught yourself to see them.

He just gives me another small smile. It’s a nothing-y smile, and something about it stings me in the heart a bit, like—around my brain rattles the thought of how my life might have felt and how it could have been different if he was the kind of person back then that he seems to be now.

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. 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.

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. Other feelings too, like this buzzy electricity. And it’s there, all thick in the air, us trying to learn about the other. It feels like we’re cramming for an exam, studying like maniacs the night before a test on a subject we’ve half-listened to all year. The content isn’t unfamiliar when you read it; it’s like you’ve read it before. Sam feels like I’ve read him before, but I haven’t. He feels like the kind of memories I wish I had but don’t. He’s like déjà vu. And you know how when that happens, your brain is like, “Wait, we’ve been here before,” and you’re watching everything unfold and you’re waiting for the next thing to happen and you’re like, “I knew that,” and then the next thing happens and you’re like, “I knew that too,” and every time something happens that you’ve been waiting to happen because you feel like it’s already happened even though it hasn’t, you feel this floaty sense of delighted satisfaction—that’s what it feels like to be near Sam Penny.

And I don’t think they’re not letting your mom into heaven because she didn’t believe in the God that modern Christianity claims to represent. I think he’s good.” I shrug. “And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.” Sam purses his mouth and nods once. “Your God sounds pretty cool, I guess.

He’s self-aware. I didn’t realize that I thought that was a sexy thing till now, but it’s so sexy.

Being a Republican or being a Democrat in America is for so many people akin to racial identity.

but the older I grow and the better I get at seeing people the way I see them, the more I understand that all truths aren’t just apples hanging off a tree waiting for me pick them. Some things people have to tell you themselves.

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.

Loving someone’s an obsession—and being in love, even fucking—you get that high.

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. It’s why people have children. To exist beyond their existence.

Childish. I know. So, so childish. But there’s something about being around your siblings that makes you regress.

I need you to listen to me when I say this: I could not be more attracted to this man if I tried.

The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.

She’s lying.” Maryanne yawned from the doorway.

I saw her last night—she was talking to Oliver in the driveway. He had a weekend bag and she hugged him goodbye.

It took me a long time to realize that something doesn’t have to always feel wrong to be wrong.

there’s something about the steadiness of Sam Penny that makes me feel sad and afraid and hopeful and lost and confused, and I find myself longing for that steadiness, which I’ve never really had in anyone before but wish I had in my dad.

And I hate this. So much, I hate this… It never used to feel hard to talk to him. It was the only thing in the world that made sense once upon a time, and I want it to feel the same; I want to be able to step through this magical doorway back in time to the place where we didn’t have distance and mistakes and drugs and shit between us, but that place doesn’t exist anymore. All we have is this. The bones of a close relationship and the smoky memory of how we used to be and might not ever be again.

It’s a different sort of startled. Startled in my heart, maybe? Because Sam should be a stranger to me, but he isn’t. Like I’ve dreamt of him all my life and I’ve just woken up and it’s bleeding through, and I know him…

It’s a different sort of startled. Startled in my heart, maybe? Because Sam should be a stranger to me, but he isn’t. Like I’ve dreamt of him all my life and I’ve just woken up and it’s bleeding through, and I know him… I know I don’t know him, but I know him. And I hope he knows me too.

I’m not always like this, by the way. Well, I am—but I try not to be. I do try to switch it off, try look at everything like a person who hasn’t taught herself to see the world stripped back to its sinew and bones, but sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard not to keep seeing things that are there in plain sight once you’ve taught yourself to see them.

The concept of the gospel is counterintuitive and much easier to digest if you adhere to a strict regimen of shallow perfectionism, like Debbie does, or my mom. It’s in this hollow I think most of the church resides, but I think the place God would like us to be is in the gutters or the libraries asking questions about why a good God would make a world so fucked up.

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?

Something happened with Julian’s sister.

I would die if we stayed together. It almost felt worth it. Proper love always does.

Maybe it hasn’t sunk in that my dad dying is the closing of a chapter in my life I’d honestly barely read yet.

It took me a long time to realize that something doesn’t have to always feel wrong to be wrong. It doesn’t even have to be violent to be wrong.

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.

It’s a natural fear, I get it. All humans, whether they know it or not, are profoundly impacted by their imminent deaths. Mortality is unbearably confronting, so much so that lots of people spend their whole lives trying to live as though it doesn’t chain them like it does the rest of us.

Are you up for a bit of a drive?” “With you?” He blinks a couple of times, then smiles. “Yeah, I’ll take the long road.

Death is confronting for sheltered people because it fractures realities.

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.

Mortality is unbearably confronting, so much so that lots of people spend their whole lives trying to live as though it doesn’t chain them like it does the rest of us.

And then I swallow, which feels embarrassing, so tighten my grip on the steering wheel, because I clearly don’t have one on this situation.

Maybe if we give him five minutes with you, he’ll jump the heterosexual ship.

You would have thought I’d processed it… Parts of it, I have. There are other parts though… I don’t know—I think I’ve done a fairly good job with grappling with what was mine to grapple with. Those first few years after they sent me away, I got real good at staring what happened in the eye. And then the rest of it I knew I was avoiding, but the farther away from it I was, the easier it was to ignore. But that’s not how pain works… You ignore it and it just sinks down deeper.

Silence with him is silence. Silence with him is five fifteen in the morning before the sun's up and it's still dark but the birds are singing. He's the heavy quilt you pull over your head when it's too cold and too early to wake up. He's the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing.

To be understood is one of most base desires we as people have,

So.” He walks toward me, smiling, a bit pleased with himself. “How am I doing, first birthday as a boyfriend?

You’re attracted to me?” I technically ask him, but it’s more of a statement because his body is already giving him away.

But Sam is different. Silence with him is silence. Silence with him is five fifteen in the morning before the sun’s up and it’s still dark but the birds are singing. He’s the heavy quilt you pull over your head when it’s too cold and too early to wake up. He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing. He’s the way water runs and bubbles over stones in a stream. He’s a quiet mind.

My heart is fucked.

Oliver’s not so good with limits anyway. He has ADHD, and—I probably don’t even need to explain it more than that—obviously he has inherently lower levels of dopamine, and so he’s always mining for it.

Not because I’m a bad sharer; I let her use whatever else she wants.

Nothing drives a wedge between siblings like unbridled favoritism.

I fell in love with Sam without asking his permission—without asking him anything, really. He doesn’t need to believe in marriage, that’s fine—unideal, but fine. I don’t want to love someone who’s afraid of commitment, though. Trying to make someone commit to you who’s afraid of commitment is like trying to tie down a tarpaulin once a hurricane’s already started. I’m not doing that.

This is it. 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.

I touch his cheek. “You think I’d let you be addicted to me?” He gives me a sore smile. “I don’t think you’d have a say.

Sam Penny in that white T-shirt, in his black jeans and those old Cons he wears, looking like that, kissing like that—it’s where you hope you’ll go when your head touches the pillow.

Oliver would never say a majority of the things he’s said to me mid-relapse were he sober,

I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.

Did you know that the word ‘homosexuality’ didn’t appear in any Bible until 1946 when the Greek word Arsenokoitai was mistranslated—

It took me a while to realize that something doesn't have to always feel wrong to be wrong. It doesn't even have to be violent to be wrong. But I was fourteen, and he'd kiss me and I wouldn't kiss him back, and he'd push me down on a bed and climb on top of me, and he would touch all of me, and I'd be stiff as a board, and he never stopped. Maybe he'd say I never stopped him. I never did, I guess.

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

But there’s always that niggle, sometimes conscious but most often not—that the people who made you, the ones who created you, your own flesh and blood, the ones who are genetically wired to want you—they didn’t want me. They didn’t want Oliver either.

He could toss me around like a rag doll.

We don’t need them. But we would like them.