September 19, 2012

Well, my last daylog was especially boring because I wasn't quite ready to say what I wanted to. But now I'm going to give a summary of what's been up, because I like this community. I'm still relatively new and not very talkative, but I've grown a bit attached to some of the people here and I think it's about time for me to explain what I've actually been up to.

I've had a rough summer and an even rougher several weeks since getting back home to Windsor. I smoked as much pot as possible to escape myself through the summer, after my production plans for the movie we were meant to be filming fell through and I had little else to keep my mind off myself. This has been my unhealthy relationship with pot since the very beginning; I just use it to run from myself, because I've hated myself for almost as long as I can remember. Most people whom I've been telling this story to recently react with utter shock to this statement, because I've built up an impenetrable mask of neutrality over the years, but it is true.

I mean, I was happy when I was a kid, but ever since middle school or so, my personal relationships started to feel meaningless. I focused more and more on using my creativity to make myself feel better and craft a big emotional shield around myself so no one would be able to tell how miserably depressed I was becoming. I resisted doing any kinds of drugs for a long time, thankfully; the videos I made in high school, the essays and stories I wrote, those were my only escape and sole drug of choice for most of it. But eventually it became too much to bear, and drugs were easier to face than reality, so I started smoking pot to escape myself.

Thankfully I never let myself get into any really hard drugs (though it hasn't stopped me from wistfully writing about them), which I probably have one of my friends to thank for. He was the sole emotional support I had throughout most of high school -- the only person I felt really saw me through the mask I'd built -- but eventually he left me to get into constant drug use so he could run away from whatever his problems were. And I made it my mission to never drop to his level, where drugs got in the way of following his dreams. Morbid to thank him for such a thing, yes, but at least it kept me from totally wasting the past several years of my life.

I've alternated between daily pot smoking and total abstinence for the last two years; either not smoking and letting myself become increasingly depressed until it fell to a point that I needed the escape, or smoking and letting myself become increasingly useless until I felt so bad about my laziness that I quit again. I always wanted to just stop entirely, because I wasn't even happy, just numb, but I needed something this summer to keep me afloat and try to earn some money.

Then at the end of the summer, when I returned home to Windsor, I immediately spiraled into the worst depression I'd ever had. And I refused to let myself waste time anymore. I spent a few days reading over nearly 800 pages of my diaries, and it became obvious pretty quickly that my situation had never changed, no matter how many times I'd tried to figure it out in the past. I wrote in 2009 that I felt like a puzzle piece was missing from my self-image entirely, making it fundamentally broken. In 2010, I wrote nearly the exact same thing without intending to. Wrote it again in 2011. Wrote it again in 2012. I am not exaggerating. In fact, I'm making it sound smaller than it is: the constant, circular streams of fruitless introversion repeat much more often than once per year.

It seems like I kept myself floating for so many years by convincing myself that I would figure out what was making me so unhappy, but eventually all the failures made the root of my unhappiness seem so incomprehensible that it caused my logic to agree with what my emotions had always told me: I really was just broken and unable to like myself no matter how much I lived up to my expectations on a superficial level.

My public image, my intellect, whatever talents and interests I have: they're all things that I've aggressively worked to develop in an attempt to fill a hole where my own self-love and self-acceptance should have been. That never really worked though. I had to read my diaries, make connections, talk to some people, do some (for once) productive soul-searching, to finally figure out the reason why, no matter how many people liked me, I never liked myself, and I always felt like they were talking to a different person entirely when they tried to be my friends.

It's because I am a different person entirely. The person I see in my head is not the guy people see me as. I feel like I'm stuck playing a character, and not even a character I have nothing in common with or even dislike, but still a character, not me, and no one sees me beyond the surface no matter how much I try. Because they just can't see me, it isn't possible to see me the way I see me.

For as long as I can remember I've always wished I was born a girl. I always wanted to be a woman, but I pushed the thought back because I got caught up on the word want -- the media, and my mother, always told me that transsexuals didn't want, they just were -- they're supposed to know for sure, not question it, and eventually I let that excuse repress the question so much that I stopped thinking about it every day. I just felt broken and couldn't explain why, because the only answer had been discarded. For some reason I never thought to ask any of my transsexual friends about it (maybe it just seemed inappropriate, I don't know). And when the thought did rarely resurface, I couldn't really question that ingrained mental block that told me "No, of course it couldn't be that..." But once I looked beyond that block and really considered it? Everything fell into place... like I finally found the missing puzzle piece.

How could it have taken so long? That block was fear and ignorance. It's something a lot of trans people I have talked to had to go through as well; my story isn't even close to being unique. I was ignorant of what being transsexual really meant, and then, I was afraid of admitting it to myself. RedOmega's writeup on Gender Identity Disorder resonated particularly well with me -- I could tell myself as much as I wanted that it was okay to admit, and I always sincerely supported my transsexual friends, but when it came to myself the voice in my head didn't want to hear it. It wasn't okay to be trans anymore, it was fucking terrifying and too huge to consider, easier to run away from and deny. So I did, for a long time.

It's been a few weeks now since I figured all this out. My friends have been supportive, more or less, and even though I know I'm at the beginning of a hard journey, it feels significantly less hard now that I'm not stuck spinning my tires anymore. I'm making progress, however slow, and it feels incredible. I'm afraid, and I have the occasional moments where I just want to run back and hide under my rock again, but now I don't have a choice. I've tasted happiness, and I want it again. I can't let myself be stuck in this character any longer.

Just a few months ago, someone asked me where I saw myself in ten years. My mind immediately conjured the image of a tombstone. Now the future seems like something I could look forward to. I'm well-adjusted in general -- I sincerely believe that I have a reason to live, I only wanted to kill myself because I felt like being numb would be better than being sad. But now, sadness doesn't feel like the only option waiting for me, so a future with me in it sounds like it would be a good idea.

I'm not trying to tell anyone that drugs are bad. I don't necessarily think they are inherently bad -- it depends on the person and situation, and all I'm saying is that I know they aren't for me, I've never been able to have a healthy relationship with them. And I'm certainly not trying to disown my old writeup "I still remember the exact moment I understood sex" -- even though it was mostly fiction (and I've wanted to delete it for the last year and a half), I still plan to leave it up. Technically, if other people find value in it, it's no less valid as a piece of writing than "I don't feel gay", which I've always admitted was fiction. (And for the record, I never have felt gay even though I like men; that was the inspiration for that title in the first place.)

At some point in the future I'll probably write some carefully planned and edited piece(s) about my journey of self-discovery (or something), but for now all I'm trying to do is document the turbulence in my life. Hopefully it's interesting to read about.

Hop #23

I was scheduled to fly yesterday and go to NYC today, but the weather yesterday was abysmal (thunderstorms, rain, tornado watch). So I delayed my travel a day and flew today.

Actually, I flew this evening, because night flying woohoo!

Since I'm a geek, and since I was caught out trying to flail around for my sectional chart last time I flew, I asked myself what was likely to happen during a night flight, and decided to go buy some flashlights to have in the flight bag. You know - just in case. The Cessna that I fly is, as I have mentioned, not in the most pristine of shape as far as internal non-critical systems - and I was willing to bet that 'cabin lights' fell into that category. Unfortunately for me (or fortunately) I was staying with some friends when I thought of this, and one said "Hey, I have to go to REI, let's go, they have good flashlights."

Yeah. Also: expensive flashlights. I ended up buying three lights: a good head-mounted lamp, with red mode (for night vision maintenance use in the air) white mode, strobes of both, and lock mode so it doesn't get turned on in the bag. I bought a second, emergency headlamp with the same modes but only 10 lumens rather than the 55 of the primary lamp. Then I bought a pocket white penlight for inspections and tertiary emergency use. Since this was REI and these were LED lights, that came to $85. Weeee!

Got to the airport tonight and it was nice and clear out, the temps around 52 degrees and the last light of the day fading. I waited for my CFI to come back in (he was flying) and he landed and came into the office around 7:20 - so we got to the ramp and the airplane at around 7:40, by which time it was almost completely dark. Woohoo! Put on the main headlamp and did a walk-around. The 172 had flown earlier in the day - so I was amazed to find no fewer than 5 perfect, complete spiderwebs, each with spider waiting hopefully in the center, spun in the gaps between the control surfaces and the wings/horizontal stabilizers. I felt somewhat guilty as I moved the control surfaces and watched the spiders scurry out of the light - and somewhat amused to note that all of them scurried into adjoining structure, not onto the ground. I wonder how many spiders live in the wings and stabilizers of 12732. Probably quite a few, actually. Must be extraordinarily well-traveled spiders.

The plane was fine, and had 25 gallons of avgas in it. I drained the tanks twice, being sure there was no water in the second cup (there had been some water from condensation in the first samples), and gave the sump an extra drain second. By that time my CFI had climbed into the plane, so I joined him and we fired up the airplane. Everything was working; I learned that no, this plane doesn't have instrument lighting, but rather has a red light in the cabin ceiling to illuminate the instruments. This is fine, except that I'm large enough that I block the leftmost instruments - turn and bank and airspeed. Not terrible, I just had to lean slightly to the left to see 'em. In any case, we taxied out to One Four and I lit the runway (five clicks on the mic), did the pre-takeoff check and rolled out.

Turns out 12732 has a really, really bright taxi light - as we climbed out, when we were at 700 feet, it was still visibly illuminating the ground beneath the airplane. It would have been nice if it hadn't been aimed pretty much straight down - because from the pilot's seat, on the ground, the light essentially lit up the tarmac directly beneath the nose, where I couldn't see anyway. Psssh, whatever. NIGHT FLYING! I get excited about this, you see, because it's awesome. Last time I did this, I was in Northern New Jersey - it was bright enough to read in the cabin from the light from the ground pretty much anywhere we went. Here, in western Mass, it was much darker. The area around the airport is well lit - Northampton and Amherst - but if you look out to the north and west, it swiftly turns to black emptiness where the nature preserve starts, west of I-91. We went around the pattern, and I somehow ended up in too close to the runway and a bit fast, so I carried a deal of speed around even though I ended up low. Confusing. My CFI mentioned dryly "So at night, red/red is probably bad, right?" referring to the fact that I'd come in below glideslope. Totally right- at night, you can't see the obstructions, so you'd really rather come in high and bleed the speed with a slip. Made the landing, though, and went around again.

The second time was better - I ended up too close, my base leg was super short again, but this time I was above the glideslope the whole way down. I came in too fast, and used up 3/4 of the runway - Still, I flared in time and settled to the runway, making the turnoff.

Time the third was interesting. I once more ended up super close on base - I essentially had to stay in my turn to base to get onto final, and even then correct back to the left. I realized, though, that there was a crossroads which I normally kept under my left wing on downwind which, at night, had a bright light visible - and I was unconsciously aiming for it, cutting my downwind leg in towards the runway. Derp. The third landing was just fine, other than having to make a hard bank to get lined up since I was so close ("I kinda don't like steep turns at night this close to the ground, do you?").

Fourth approach was no good - too high. I was in too close and trying to stay high to stay above the glideslope, and when we rolled out from the turn to final, i said "Nah. Way too high. Going around." I got a nod, which meant yep, I was way too high but had regained a few points by realizing it. Fourth landing was much better - spoiled only by a slightly incomplete flare and a landing which for me was a first - we touched down with the nose first. Whoooooops. Still, only a slight bounce, all OK.

Fifth was pretty much a 'normal' landing. By staying what I felt was WAAAAAY the heck out in the pattern, I managed to avoid cutting inwards on downwind, and thus came in on the glideslope. I was a bit high, though - as we came over the threshold, I was at the correct airspeed but high. I said "Hmmm, are we...?"

"Yeah, we're OK." So I landed it, and yep, we were OK. My speed had been better (slower) so we still came to a stop just past the turnoff.

We left it at 5 landings. I have to do a night cross-country to qualify for my checkride, so that will give me the additional hour of night flying time I need; I now have 13 landings at night of the required 10. While I don't think I'd produce an elegant landing at an unfamiliar airport, I now have no doubt I can safely land the airplane.

Next week: 'long' ( > 55nm each way ) cross-country, and then I do a solo X-C, and we do a dual night X-C (my CFI suggested we go get dinner in New Bedford, which has a decent airport restaurant, sounds good to me!) and after that...

After that, according to him, we start doing prep work for my checkride. That might take several flights, but at this point, it's back to hitting the books for the oral component, and doing ground reference maneuvers and short/soft field takeoffs and landings to get procedures right.

Whoo! Progress!