It's hard to face failure. I'm not ready to go home, don't know what I'll do if I can't make it as a pilot. How can one accept that his one dream in life is not something he can achieve? It's like in that scene in Serenity, when the Operative has seen the truth behind the Alliance, found out the conspiracy behind the Miranda massacre, seen that his 'world without sin' is but a living nightmare, and his famous last words to Malcolm,"There is nothing left to see". A man without a dream, without the one thing which keeps him wanting to breathe, from one moment to the next, has nothing left. He is nothing.
Failing my check ride brought that image in my mind, it's like having front row seats to my own funeral. Knowing how screwed up I was when I was up in the air, making the mistakes that even rookies wouldn't, I don't know what the hell I was doing here. I had gone up more than enough times, practiced my sortie both on and off the ground, and still I was making the errors that I had done previously. What was I thinking? Worse still, my first review flight went worse than my test, and I think the senior instructor who took me was stretching his vocabulary trying to find euphemisms to soften the blow to me. But it didn't take away the truth that I screwed up again, and worse than before.
My next review is on Monday, and this one is make or break. Shape up, or ship out. Everyone's trying to help me out, including the instructors, but it still boils down to me. Because I am in control of the aircraft, and I must fly her. I will, or I will come home. Then again, where is home when there is no longer any heart, no longer any man left.
A man needs no home when he has nothing left.
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