The Trilogy is complete. All three queens have been met, loved, and then passed on through my life. The mission is complete.
The first mission was about faith. The second mission was about completely losing myself, suffering great physical, emotional and mental pain that led to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The third...
Well, the third was about being restored. It was also about accepting my limitations, which was a lesson I'd come to learn in bits and pieces over the previous few years. For some time I saw my mission as a failure. She was a queen thoroughly disrespected and emotionally abused by a husband who was equally willing to be overly possessive of her and leave her at the drop of a hat or for any skirt that danced in his direction, a man who left her regularly depressed and crying in the rain because she truly believed it was best for their children that they stay together. She took him back twice on my watch, endured his abuse and in the end cut off all communication with me because I reminded her that she deserved better. And she did. She just chose the other path. And in the end I had to accept and respect that.
And it nearly did me in, but in quite a different way than the second queen's mental illness and ongoing suicide attempts did. It nearly did me in because I had trouble accepting that I had made no real difference in her life. And I believed the purpose of my missions was to in some way make the lives of the queens better. It was never about that. It was about all the other people I encountered along the way and how I in some way, even in some small way, made their lives better by my being in them.
Because, you see, I am not supposed to be here. I killed myself in 1994 and gave up this life, but I was given it back provided I accepted and followed this mission. The missions were about self-realization. They were about showing me that this world was indeed a better place with me in it than without me. Everything I do is gravy. The world without me went on about its business, but the world with me is somehow slightly different and hopefully better. Through the queens I came to work with troubled kids, to use my gift of empathy in ways that helped those who went through the kinds of struggles I did before my suicide.
And now I have been released. My debt is paid. The final penance is the final reward. Now I can turn the sky to gold. And I can do it in my own way and in my own time.
Thank you. All of you.