Downward Spiral: 19
Log Entry: 19
It's remarkable how much a finely tuned skill atrophies after months of disuse.
There's a reason a combat pilot spends about thirty hours during a standard week in a simulator. So much of what we do revolves around memorized muscle movement and intimate familiarity with the instrumentation in a starfighter cockpit. The briefest hesitation to find and adjust your deflector shield or weapons battery settings is enough to get you killed. Aft shields are falling, you need to instantly and blindly reach for the shield controls on the left-hand control panel just below the throttle lever and shunt power from the forward deflectors. All while you've got an enemy target solidly locked onto your six and spitting laser cannon fire at you.
It was a rough go for the first week or two. I was still getting over the jitters from that first run and every now and then, I'd feel a bit of panic bubbling to the surface. It took some time to get over that, and I think it was only because I was slowly rebuilding my familiarity with dangerous combat flying again. Part of the shock was reflecting back to that day I punched out of the cockpit of my X-Wing and lost a piece of my skull in the process. Another part was simply being thrown back into a high-speed, high intensity situation for the first time in months. These two elements would feed into each other. The stress from dealing with a simulated dogfight fueled the panic I felt as those traumatic memories resurfaced.
We kept coming back to the simulator every few days. Eventually it became a daily ritual. A bit of exposure to bring my reflexes back up to speed and to eliminate one part of that feedback loop. It was like being at the Academy again, struggling to keep up with the enemy starfighters and react in time to prevent a virtual death. Heart racing, vision narrowing, breathing accelerated. Just like the Academy, I thought I'd never get past that feeling of overwhelming stress. But I did. Eventually.
I think after my reflexes were closer to acceptable, I was able to start dealing with that fear of having to punch out again. For every Hobbie Klivian you hear about, there's about two dozen that are never the same after going extravehicular. I'll be completely honest, after getting a durasteel plate in my skull, the idea of repeating that process isn't all that appealing. The Doctor and I kept at it, though. Sometimes she'd stack the odds against me, putting me in situations where there was no chance of success. Ever heard of the Dresdena-Voru run? It's an impossible simulation given to starfighter pilots to gauge their reaction to an unwinnable skirmish. If you were lucky, you achieved the best result: escaping into Hyperspace while failing all of the given mission parameters. If you were unlucky, you were vaped. More often than not, you fall into the unlucky category.
Let's just say it was a struggle to learn how to pull the eject lever again. More often than not, I'd go down with the simulated ship than risk exposing myself to virtual vacuum. Sure, the virtual vacuum was just a dark simulator heated to a pleasant room temperature, but you'll forgive me for being irrational. Again, durasteel plate in my skull. The rational part of your mind knows that if you want to live, you stand a better chance by ejecting than you do sitting in a flaming ball of shrapnel. However, if there's one thing I've learned over the last few months, it's that irrational fear can very easily overwhelm rational knowledge.
But I kept at it. I feel like that's important to note. I ran those simulations until my reflexes came back. I ran them until I re-embraced Onasi's Axiom: Don't think; just fly. I even managed to pull the eject lever a few times. Now there's something I never thought I'd be proud to say. There's the usual caveats. A simulation is one thing, real flying is another. I might lock up once I'm out there for real, but I'll never know unless I get behind the flightstick again. I'm going to find out. Once I get the go-ahead to go back to work, I'm going to show everyone that I can still handle flying.
It's hard for me to come to terms with the fact I've been here for almost nine months. I look back at where I came from and I'm not quite sure how to feel. Embarrassment? Fear? Nine months ago I was sitting in my apartment, ready to commit an act that would have ended everything. All because I was trapped in a spiral of depression and hopelessness that I wasn't equipped to deal with. But, as horrible as this sounds, that moment needed to happen. I needed to fall as far as possible. I had to learn that things weren't right the way they were. Years of undiagnosed and untreated problems were going to destroy me. If not then, it would have happened later. And who knows what the consequences of waiting to address these issues would have been?
I was sick. I still am, I always will be. But now I can cope with it. I can manage it. I can beat it.
If there's one regret I have, it's that I didn't have these tools and knowledge sooner. On my last mission, I had to make the most difficult personnel decision of my career. After the bombing where three of my pilots were killed, one of the survivors was showing clear signs of mental distress. Understandable distress, mind you. I made the call shortly after to remove her from the roster and send her home, which was (unsurprisingly) greeted by an angry tirade from my pilot. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or not and her anger only served to compound my confusion. If only I had then what I have now.
I would have known that I had made the correct call. I had to send her home for the exact reasons I had to come here. We both were unfit for duty. But that's not what fills me with regret. I could have helped her. she was hurting and I saw it. I could have done more, but I didn't know how. I didn't have the life experiences to help her. But maybe I could have if I'd gotten myself help sooner. The signs were certainly there, I was simply too stubborn to see them.
Regret. Not being more sensitive to that pilot who needed me. Putting myself in danger when I didn't need to. Not seeking out help sooner. I'm the kind of person who tends to hang on to these things. Probably for too long and for foolish reasons, but that is a part of me. Something that won't be changing. The difference is now it doesn't consume me. I will do whatever it takes to keep it from fuelling depression and anxiety. I can't change the past, but I can use it to mold my future. I may regret the things I have or haven't done, but it's all part of who I am now. I don't look at any of this as being either "good" or "bad" anymore. It simply is.
I suffer from depression.
I've gone through post-traumatic stress disorder.
I lost command of my squadron.
I nearly died.
I tried to kill myself.
It all just ... is. I can linger on all of it, let regret for those actions consume me. Or I can embrace it. Learn from it. Allow myself to be strengthened by it.
Regret was and remains a trigger for me. A trigger that finally has the safety turned on.
It's remarkable how much a finely tuned skill atrophies after months of disuse.
There's a reason a combat pilot spends about thirty hours during a standard week in a simulator. So much of what we do revolves around memorized muscle movement and intimate familiarity with the instrumentation in a starfighter cockpit. The briefest hesitation to find and adjust your deflector shield or weapons battery settings is enough to get you killed. Aft shields are falling, you need to instantly and blindly reach for the shield controls on the left-hand control panel just below the throttle lever and shunt power from the forward deflectors. All while you've got an enemy target solidly locked onto your six and spitting laser cannon fire at you.
It was a rough go for the first week or two. I was still getting over the jitters from that first run and every now and then, I'd feel a bit of panic bubbling to the surface. It took some time to get over that, and I think it was only because I was slowly rebuilding my familiarity with dangerous combat flying again. Part of the shock was reflecting back to that day I punched out of the cockpit of my X-Wing and lost a piece of my skull in the process. Another part was simply being thrown back into a high-speed, high intensity situation for the first time in months. These two elements would feed into each other. The stress from dealing with a simulated dogfight fueled the panic I felt as those traumatic memories resurfaced.
We kept coming back to the simulator every few days. Eventually it became a daily ritual. A bit of exposure to bring my reflexes back up to speed and to eliminate one part of that feedback loop. It was like being at the Academy again, struggling to keep up with the enemy starfighters and react in time to prevent a virtual death. Heart racing, vision narrowing, breathing accelerated. Just like the Academy, I thought I'd never get past that feeling of overwhelming stress. But I did. Eventually.
I think after my reflexes were closer to acceptable, I was able to start dealing with that fear of having to punch out again. For every Hobbie Klivian you hear about, there's about two dozen that are never the same after going extravehicular. I'll be completely honest, after getting a durasteel plate in my skull, the idea of repeating that process isn't all that appealing. The Doctor and I kept at it, though. Sometimes she'd stack the odds against me, putting me in situations where there was no chance of success. Ever heard of the Dresdena-Voru run? It's an impossible simulation given to starfighter pilots to gauge their reaction to an unwinnable skirmish. If you were lucky, you achieved the best result: escaping into Hyperspace while failing all of the given mission parameters. If you were unlucky, you were vaped. More often than not, you fall into the unlucky category.
Let's just say it was a struggle to learn how to pull the eject lever again. More often than not, I'd go down with the simulated ship than risk exposing myself to virtual vacuum. Sure, the virtual vacuum was just a dark simulator heated to a pleasant room temperature, but you'll forgive me for being irrational. Again, durasteel plate in my skull. The rational part of your mind knows that if you want to live, you stand a better chance by ejecting than you do sitting in a flaming ball of shrapnel. However, if there's one thing I've learned over the last few months, it's that irrational fear can very easily overwhelm rational knowledge.
But I kept at it. I feel like that's important to note. I ran those simulations until my reflexes came back. I ran them until I re-embraced Onasi's Axiom: Don't think; just fly. I even managed to pull the eject lever a few times. Now there's something I never thought I'd be proud to say. There's the usual caveats. A simulation is one thing, real flying is another. I might lock up once I'm out there for real, but I'll never know unless I get behind the flightstick again. I'm going to find out. Once I get the go-ahead to go back to work, I'm going to show everyone that I can still handle flying.
It's hard for me to come to terms with the fact I've been here for almost nine months. I look back at where I came from and I'm not quite sure how to feel. Embarrassment? Fear? Nine months ago I was sitting in my apartment, ready to commit an act that would have ended everything. All because I was trapped in a spiral of depression and hopelessness that I wasn't equipped to deal with. But, as horrible as this sounds, that moment needed to happen. I needed to fall as far as possible. I had to learn that things weren't right the way they were. Years of undiagnosed and untreated problems were going to destroy me. If not then, it would have happened later. And who knows what the consequences of waiting to address these issues would have been?
I was sick. I still am, I always will be. But now I can cope with it. I can manage it. I can beat it.
If there's one regret I have, it's that I didn't have these tools and knowledge sooner. On my last mission, I had to make the most difficult personnel decision of my career. After the bombing where three of my pilots were killed, one of the survivors was showing clear signs of mental distress. Understandable distress, mind you. I made the call shortly after to remove her from the roster and send her home, which was (unsurprisingly) greeted by an angry tirade from my pilot. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or not and her anger only served to compound my confusion. If only I had then what I have now.
I would have known that I had made the correct call. I had to send her home for the exact reasons I had to come here. We both were unfit for duty. But that's not what fills me with regret. I could have helped her. she was hurting and I saw it. I could have done more, but I didn't know how. I didn't have the life experiences to help her. But maybe I could have if I'd gotten myself help sooner. The signs were certainly there, I was simply too stubborn to see them.
Regret. Not being more sensitive to that pilot who needed me. Putting myself in danger when I didn't need to. Not seeking out help sooner. I'm the kind of person who tends to hang on to these things. Probably for too long and for foolish reasons, but that is a part of me. Something that won't be changing. The difference is now it doesn't consume me. I will do whatever it takes to keep it from fuelling depression and anxiety. I can't change the past, but I can use it to mold my future. I may regret the things I have or haven't done, but it's all part of who I am now. I don't look at any of this as being either "good" or "bad" anymore. It simply is.
I suffer from depression.
I've gone through post-traumatic stress disorder.
I lost command of my squadron.
I nearly died.
I tried to kill myself.
It all just ... is. I can linger on all of it, let regret for those actions consume me. Or I can embrace it. Learn from it. Allow myself to be strengthened by it.
Regret was and remains a trigger for me. A trigger that finally has the safety turned on.