Hupps Mill Plaza, South Boston, Virginia

This is how I lived my life: toss two pennies in and take one out. But wait, it was a wishing well! Ahhh, a wishing well! (Shaking my hands from the wrists as the Italians do and my head in retrospect.)
Forget EVERYTHING they told you.
Do you realize how greedy a wishing well is. It stays in the same place, the water is old and barely, if at all, swirls around reflecting the same image day after day. It hoards dreams and perpetuates the idea that action is irrelevant to change. And some people keep changing it up, and changing it up, and changing it up, but never really DO anything. As if spontaneous combustion will some how poof their hopes right before their eyes . . . as they idly stare at the cryptic seispool of a wishing well. If at all an image comes, let it be a hamster running around his wheel, knowing that one day he will get somewhere different. But for sake's sake, I'll digress.
My friend, the likes of whose friendship is tried, true, few, and far between, had told me to prepare to return to a hardship. The joke was no joke at all. To do something different, one has to step outside the wheel, and when the wheel is so comfortable, that is a feat, monumental and insane.
My wishes have always been so traditional and so radical. The union of those two concepts births a breach and painful departure from an understood trajectory. Then come the ontological questions of sacrifice and acceptance, or, conflict. Some days I wonder what it would have been like to grow up on the Kennedy compound: sheltered in the well-educated and respected, posh and romantic confides of Martha's Vineyard, situated in the North. But, the truth is, that is a tragic story and so, the thought is a fleeting one.
The ranting you say, what does it all mean? Here goes the story, without purple prose: I speak truth. The day after I returned, I had an job related appointment at the hospital. Walking through the sliding glass doors I saw a man who serves in my church. After exchanging hugs, he said to me, "you've been half way around the world and you still aren't married." (Shaking my hands from the wrists as the Italians do and my head in retrospect.) Now, maybe this is just a small town syndrome and I am sure his question was rooted in some sort of overall goodness but why hadn't he asked if I had met a man whose love to God is faithful and to me infallible? Soon, another lady had no problem telling me what would be best for my life would be to secure a secretary job at the hospital or a teaching job at the high school. Each well respected sources of employment, but neither a point on my life's rightly, careening line. But neglect love, or passion in life seems to refute the blessing of life itself. Where does this authority come from that they may question who I am or tell me what to do? Well, it came from me and it comes from anyone who allows the unjustly disambiguated thoughts of another person to deflect their purpose as God's creation. I am who I am, should God be for me, He will do a whole new thing. That is amazing and sufficient.
There was this girl, who did not like me. Why, well, that remains the unknown factor of our dealings. I had these patchwork shoes I wore because I thought they were amazing. She had taken it upon herself to make fun of the shoes and the wearer. As we moved through school there was always some issue of myself, that had become her source of ridicule. That was the past. A week ago was my sister's birthday. She decided on a pair of boots she had already seen and so, I took her to pick them out. When we arrived, a voice had said, "welcome to [insert name of shoe-store]" and and ironic ellipsis had been made.
I couldn't continue to live my life through the wishes of a well. It's a pull to and from my home. There is a little white washed house on 360 near Friendly Corner store. It has two windows along the facade and a horse pasture next to it. It has been sitting there for years, maybe it isn't big enough or new enough, but to me, it is amazing. Everyday I pass hoping no one has bought because it houses these thoughts:

I imagine having round table nights, with yuppies wilin' out in amazing ways, talking about the things we care about as rural folk, and things we know about as an educated demographic. I imagine at this gathering there is art on the wall and some old friends discussing their new LLCs and INCs, and from behind he (that aforementioned infallible love), whispers, three delicate words in my ear.
The RocBoys must have been crazy, we both understood that. As our friends toast inside, their silhouettes made out in the two picture windows, we walk out towards the field, considering everything and how up from muddy bootstraps, came realized blessings. Laughing, hand in hand because life is good and the path, insane.