Today I am sitting in a house that smells like cat shit, asking myself a question I should have asked years ago: What am I going to do now?
I have spent a considerable portion of my fifty-seven years replaying betrayals and appointing myself judge, jury, and prosecuting attorney. The verdict was usually unanimous. Everybody else was guilty. Unfortunately, the courtroom was entirely inside my head.
I inherited two cats after my wife’s death. They are still here. My daughters are not. The room that could be my recording studio has become a feline sanitation department, and I am its unpaid director. I would like to resign. The cats have declined to accept my resignation.
The cats are two furry representatives of a larger collection of things I never expected to carry: grief, addiction, family conflict, financial uncertainty, courtrooms, and memories of jail. Sometimes death leaves the surviving person holding the broom.
A traditional 21-gun salute is a ceremonial honor, not twenty-one opportunities to shoot at somebody who disappointed you. An important distinction in my present condition. I am borrowing the image to mark the end of a way of living.
Twenty-one guns. Not fired in anger. Fired in farewell. Farewell to winning every argument. Farewell to forcing reconciliation. Farewell to measuring my worth by somebody else’s reputation. Farewell to making my children ammunition in an adult conflict. Farewell to the belief that justice must arrive on my schedule. Farewell to publishing an accusation simply because I am hurting. Farewell to the fantasy that the past owes me an apology before I can have a future.
That is only eight guns. I am saving the other thirteen. I suspect I will need them.
Which brings me to reputation. I have spent time polishing mine. I have also found out what the polish was hiding. Reputation is the version of you that exists in rooms you have not entered. Character is what remains when the audience leaves.
A veneer is not necessarily false. It is simply incomplete. A beautiful piece of furniture may have a thin layer of expensive wood over something cheaper. From across the room, nobody knows the difference. Until somebody scratches the surface. Life does that, sometimes with sandpaper, sometimes with industrial excavation equipment.
Recovery has taught me that admitting wrongdoing does not require accepting every accusation somebody makes about you. I can acknowledge my failures without pretending every judgment against me is accurate. I can forgive people without agreeing with everything they have done.
The stage taught me that an audience sees the performance, not the rehearsal. Not the missed notes, the broken equipment, or the exhausted musician wondering whether he should have become an accountant.
There are two young women whose opinions matter more to me than any audience ever could. My daughters. I miss them. There is no punch line for that. Trust must be earned, sometimes slowly, with no guarantee. But the absence of contact does not mean the absence of love.
Jesus had remarkably little patience for religious hypocrisy. He saved His harshest words for people who used an appearance of righteousness to conceal what was inside. And before anyone mistakes this for a sermon aimed at somebody else, the mirror remains fully operational. Unfortunately.
Today I prayed. I told Jesus I was overwhelmed and tired. I gave Him my anger, fear, and grief, and asked Him to show me the next right step. Not twenty steps. One.
The next right thing might be a phone call, an apology, a correct Humane Society form, or saying absolutely nothing. That last one is especially hard for a musician who regards silence as a technical malfunction.
Forgiveness does not mean pretending nothing happened or abandoning boundaries. It means refusing to make hatred the permanent landlord of my soul. I have paid that landlord enough rent.
The goal now is simple. Tell the truth. Stay sober. Keep my commitments. Take responsibility when I am wrong. Stand by the truth when I am right. Eventually every veneer wears thin, and whatever lies underneath is revealed. I would rather spend my life working on that part.
Twenty-one guns. Present arms. Render honors. Then put the weapons down. There is work to do.
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
John 8:32 (KJV)
— JC
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