Achievement Unlocked: 2,000 Followers.

It took me a full year to get to 1,000. Then it took two months to get the next 1,000 followers. It would seem the rate of growth is accelerating. It amazes me, I just wish it didn't coincide with something so terrible. That makes it difficult to take pleasure in, along with everything else.

It reminds me not to focus only on who is lost, but who is still around. My dear friends, my family members...and you. My ravenous readers, without whom I would probably grow old and die in obscurity, only a few dozen people ever having read my work. I owe it all to you beauties, and shudder to think where I'd be without your support.

Those of you who have read many of my stories have probably noticed the deeper meanings. About life, relationships and coping with loss. There is more to gain by propagating these stories to a wider audience than simply putting more STEEM in my wallet. They represent lessons I have learned about what to do with the pain life inflicts on each of us, so that it works to your advantage instead of destroying you.

It sometimes feels pointless to keep trying to build a better life. What for? Laura will still be gone. But such thoughts are useless, cruel illusions that afflict those left behind. The illusion that the world is a cold, bleak, grey place. That love is over, that all good things have vanished and that it will be this way forever.

But pain cannot fool me. I have seen all of its tricks before. I will not die for Laura. I will live for Laura, and some day those grey clouds will part. The sun will shine again. Birds will sing. Color, warmth, sound and light will return to my world, and the only tears on my face will be of happiness.

As my readership and influence grow however, I must begin to think about how to maximize the good I can do with it. I don't know exactly what I will do yet but I'd like to raise awareness of Interstitial Cystitis, the painful condition which played a large role in taking Laura from me.

I would like to agitate to make the medical care she needed easier and quicker to get for people with this condition. I can never know if that would have saved her. It would not have brought Bethany back for example, and it was Bethany's own suicide which played the largest causal role in Laura's.

It is something, though. Each of us is but a small creature in the grand scheme of things, so it is not reasonable to feel anxious or inadequate that no one of us can do everything. It is enough to do something.

I have a cause now, more important to me than any other. I have a readership to provide the practical, public and financial support as I pursue that cause. And I have a pen, which as you may know, is mightier than any sword.