I have finally pretty much climbed out of my post retirement depression

to about 99.5% which is damned good as far as I can see.

A couple of people with similar experience say that occasionally they have brief period of the blues here and there.

Anyway, after I made an imbecile out of myself and got called on it I got on the horn and called someone I know that's been a counselor of a sort for years. I needed a little help.

No, it was not time for rehab. Besides rehab is for quitters and I'm not a quitter. 

It was time to call the consigliere. He's a former Navy/VA counselor and I've known him quite a while. When we ran into each other before I retired he told me that as my responsiblilties dwindled my brain would remember all sorts of things I had long forgotten. He was right.

Anyway I called him and over the past few months he's made several very small suggestions that I have followed and crawled my way out of the muddle. I am pretty amazed and while it was sprt of slow I'm finally getting it together.

He explained to me that many rehab places try and do too much to a person at once and fail. For example they'll take a hard core heroin addict and try and get him to stop using heroin, quit smoking, lose weight and so on and so forth. Of course it's too much change for one person all at once so they almost always relapse.

I think two of the small things he suggested I do are to make my bed daily. He said not to make it with hospital corners, but just to set it up so when I turn in it's there and ready to go.

The other thing is to take off the usual rags I run around in and put on a pair of slacks and a shirt with a collar on it and go somewhere a couple of times a week. Nowhere special, anywhere. Take a walk through the mall, grab a burger but just go out in front of the human race. Both of these actually helped a lot. 

In fact I dug out a set of khakis I used to keep on the boat but rarely wore and ironed them up. It's the set I used to fold a certain way and keep under the mattress in case I needed to look slick in whatever emergency that came up. (Fact is I needed them once when a surprise dinner ashore came up. My host said I looked pretty damned professional)

One thing about ironing a shirt is that right after the fire when I was holed up in a fleabag they had an iron and ironing board and it gave me comfort ironing and re-ironing French Army pleats into an old work shirt.

As for drinking I figured he's want me to go on the wagon. He had an interesting take on that. He said to me to quit outright only if I could not get it under control. I took some time off and dried out. When I returned I had a plan and ran it by the Doc.

A shot on Tuesday night when I go on the Tuesday night ham radio net and a half-pint weekend ration. With maybe a Guinness at the sportsman club on Wednesdays when I didn't have a ham radio club meeting.

Doc has my kind of sense of humor. "Binge drinking is officially defined as four or more drinks a night. A half pint has about 4 drinks in it. Can't have you becoming a goodie two- shoes. Just go on a bender and drink the whole four drinks on Saturday night!" We both laughed and that's about it. I'm not getting incoherent or actually hurting myself. It's actually made me lose a couple of pounds. 

He later said to me it wasn't the fact that I drank so much as the reason I drank so hard. I wanted to escape.

Another thing he recommended is having someone over for a meal about once or twice a week. That's been good for me because it makes me do some interesting cooking. There's a couple of guys I know that just love comfort food (or even drunk food) and it's fun to make those slop dishes we grew up on. Tuna noodle casserole, meat loaf or American Chop Suey, anyone? I make a pretty good biscuits and gravy or a Piccolo's breakfast garbage plate. I see an Old School  beef stew in the making pretty soon. It's been damned cold out and that's a good time for it.

He also suggested I do more cooking at home and cut back in the convenience store stuff. Good idea. I might even lose some weight.

Retirement was a Grade A bitch. When I was a sailor I had a sense of mission. I was a somebody and respected as being pretty damned good at my job. No cargo contaminations and no spills that were attributed to me in my entire career. None. A perfect career.

I admit that a big part of the reason was that I had pride in myself but there was also a LOT of pride in never having let my shipmates down either. Now my was behind me and I was a nobody and completely adrift.

I grew frustrated, angry and depressed. I was snappish and angry. However I will say that most-certainly not all- of the people I snapped at probably deserved it. Still I was on a graveyard spiral and things started getting worse and worse. 

Guys like Doc are amazing because they understand humans and are pretty holistic about things. They look at each individual as a whole and while he knew he was probably not going to be able to turn me into a saint, he knew enough about human nature to get me back pretty close to on track as a person.

I think what he did was help me start to get my pride as a human being back again.

Funny how it works when you get a debt you can't really repay. The other day I handed Doc a bottle of Jim Beam he understood the Old School code but added that I have to take him shooting. That's a done deal and it won't be only once I shoot with him. 

It's late now and time to turn in to a reasonably well made bed. 

 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY