I'll be perfectly honest with you Midway. After my son was born prematurely I was away from the game and normal life for three months - and it was a hard three months. I watched four premature babies die in our ward and thought ours was going to die on two occasions. I watched him puffed up on Morphine one night on a ventilator waiting for it. Sat up all night, couldn't look away. Life was no longer care-free nor relaxed. Everything was pressure, consequential and important.
When we came home and I was able to return to flying I embraced it as a sort of normalcy, something to balance my recent experiences. I also decided to try and learn some other aircraft and was derping around one night in a Bf109G-14 with a drop tank and everything. I ran into your high Spitfire Mk IX three times on climb-out initially afk I think. The first two times sub-e, heavy, unprepared and trying to fly the 109 like my Ki-84 I was slaughtered as one might expect.
Then you wrote on 200: 'I remember, when you taught me how to Immelmann. Now I can pwn you at will'. There were even comments from other players, telling you to steady on. The third fight went less well as I got a better position and you tore your own wings off in a very high G turn. Do you remember that incident?
Well I felt very betrayed and offended by what you said and regretted helping you to the point where I haven't helped anyone since.
It took me a year to piece my life and flying back together after the premature birth of Tiny Shida. I don't know that I've forgiven what I considered a rude and undeserved comment that evening. I have naturally learned a lot about other people through this game, what they think, how they think.
What I still find fascinating however about this activity, above all, is what you learn about yourself. Your comments bugged me enough to look into myself and see why. Since that night I have done nothing but disassemble and reassemble my ACM. I learned to not care about performance, the result, the victor or the loser. I no longer value shooting an opponent in a skill-v-skill fight. I discovered something more rewarding. That one learns more through defeat than victory, how to research and develop my own ACM, how to advance my technique, how to approach this activity with a sport psychologically.
I fly now with a liberation and serenity I never had before. I don't care to be quantified or evaluated against another pilot. AH flying is for me the Zen activity I wanted it to be. I am centred, alone, content.
So ironically I have learned more from you, than you ever did from me.
That is good, I think. I too have dealt with severe tragedies but won't go into them... and understand that a comment by someone at the wrong time can, unbeknown to the person making the comment, be taken the wrong way. 99% of the time silly game comments are meaningless or carry very little weight, but occasionally one has more impact than it should. I apologize to you, Nrshida, for having said that to you at that moment in time. I did not know.
I will tell you that I sincerely love you in a human way for your kindness and strongly empathize with the difficulties you've had to deal with. Almost everyone will during some point in their life deal with severe loss and tragedy. Some earlier than others and some more than others.
I won't let comments here from anyone, or let any event here for that matter, affect me when I know they are not related to other real life events.
If I were there with you in real life, I would be the first to do what I can to help. I've been through very sad and difficult situations myself and expect to see more of them over time. But the opposite is also true and make dealing with the difficult events worth it.
Know that I am very sincere in my appreciation of you, wish you would not have had to deal with tragedy, and wish for that moment I would have said nothing, had I known.
I hope nothing but the best for you, always.
