Way back not long after I first started blogging, I discovered in my stats counter that I was getting some hits from a very unusually named blog. I think the actual web address was catharticvomit.blogspot, but the title was something different. I am not quite sure what. It was written by a lady who was living in South Africa. I have been unable to find the blog, she did say she wouldn't be writing anymore some time ago, so perhaps it got deleted by blogger. Or maybe she took it down herself. My first visit there happened just after she had started the blog and it affected me in a very strong way.

Her first post, the very first, she ended with a paragraph about the links she was putting up and she said something about each person she had linked to. About me she said "I have included Sarah because she makes me laugh." Then later in the paragraph she said that she would change the links when she felt like it "or when Sarah dies of AIDS." I was devastated to read that. At the time I was getting very little feedback from other people and it cut me to realise that someone saw me as a joke. Did others see me as joke too? I went to Mac and cried over it. He held me and told me that it was all right, that He loved me and adored me for who I am and there was no need for me to cry over someone that barely knew me. He told me not to say anything about the entry either to the author or on my blog. I wanted to say something though. I wanted to defend myself and my choices. Then I realised that I didn't have anything to defend. What could I possibly say? I am me. I can't pretend to be someone else to please someone. I have spent too much of my life doing just that. Mac has always insisted on honesty from me and I have never been a great liar. I suffer way too much from guilt to ever be good at bluffing. So most of the time, even when I was pretending to be things I wasn't just to please the person I was with, I was still mostly honest with them.

And honesty can be hard to take. Just ask Mac, He will agree. There are times when my honesty cuts Him, probably deeper than He will ever tell me. Yet He is strong enough to handle it and strong enough to insist upon it, even when it isn't what He wants to hear.

Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Please bear with me.

So Mac had told me not to say anything and the more I thought about it, the more I knew He was right. I said nothing. He told me not to stop being me on the blog, that it was my place to say whatever it was I wanted to say and no one could stop me but me. He said that no matter what I said, He wanted to read it and that He fell in love with me each time I wrote something new for Him. "Be true to yourself, Sarah. Be honest. Not everyone will think you are a joke. I don't." Then He told me to stay away from that site, because it was bad for me to read things like that about me.

So I mostly did what He asked of me and as our relationship grew and evolved and as I grew and evolved so did this little place of mine. It became a better reflection of who we are and how we love and why it is the best way for us to be. But I didn't stay away from that blog. I went back there every now and then and no matter what new things she had written, I always also read her first post, "or when Sarah dies of AIDS." I discovered through the new posts she wrote and the other things she said that I actually liked this lady. She was intelligent, witty and compassionate and we enjoyed some of the same books. I agreed with most of what she had to say but still there was that comment, "or when Sarah dies of AIDS."

More and more people were coming to visit my blog now. Many of the same people were coming back day after day. They wanted to read what I said, what I thought and felt and they enjoyed the descriptions of the sex too, but it wasn't the sex they commented on. They commented on how they could relate to what I said, or told me how it worked in their relationship. And amongst them I had a few people telling me I was a joke, laughing at me or telling me I was pathetic. I took each one as a punch in the chest, then put the hurt away and moved on.

Then one day I went back to that site, I have no clue why I kept going back, perhaps it was self harm, a way of punishing myself, I really don't know, I just couldn't seem to not go. I had to. And this time, there was another entry about me. I was shocked. The lady said that I understood her better then she sometimes knew herself and it was scary the way I seemed to know her mind. She wondered if I was her star sign. I immediately went to her archives to have another look at "or when Sarah dies of AIDS" and it was gone. Her post was still there, but it ended at her changing the links when she felt like it. I cannot fully explain what that meant to me. I had been the punch-line of her joke, now I was a person to her. Somehow through my words and thoughts and feelings, I became real. It healed a little wound inside my heart. It was that important. I don't know why, but it was.

From then on I have had little to say to those that laugh at me. I have no time for those that feel I am pathetic and even less time for those that ask me to defend what I believe in. Since then I have not let it hurt when I have been attacked. If you want to have a go at what I say, if you think I am a joke, that is your problem, not mine. I have already touched one person out there, one person who thought the same as you. I touched her because I stayed true to myself and let her see who I really was so do not expect me to change to suit you.

And for every one of you out there that sneer and turn up your nose and think that you are better then me, there are at least ten others that write to me to say "thankyou for sharing who you are, you help me". And for every one of you smirking and thinking that I am a joke, there are at least ten others that say "I thought there was something wrong with me before I read you and discovered that I am not alone in feeling what I do." They are the people that count. I will keep on being honest for them here. In this blog I will continue to be me.

A few days ago, my stats passed the half a million mark. There are roughly a thousand of you each day that come here to see what I say even though I don't write daily anymore. I want to thank each and every one of you for the support you have shown me, through coming back time and time again. I realise that I don't know most of you, I have never spoken to you outside of the things I say in my blog, but I know you are all there, either smiling or laughing or shaking your head, wondering what Mac or I will say or do next. For whatever reason you come, for the laughs, or the love, for the titillation or the tantrums, because you relate to what I say or are just doing your best to understand but really don't get it yet and maybe never will, because you accidentally clicked on my link or even because we are friends, I am glad that each and everyone of you stopped by here today and I hope you will come back again.

I will be here, just being me. That's really all I do here.

That's all I want to be.