The Aviator

Come Fly With Me… May or may not be a bad sign that every time I see this it gets more relatable. Still in love with Cate Blanchett’s Katharine Hepburn. One of the films that has genuinely altered the course of my life. Without really knowing anything about Mr. Hughes, I happened to see it shortly after one of the first really bad flare-ups of my own OCD, or at least one of the first I was aware of. My girlfriend at the time (God bless her) had already implicitly picked up on a lot of my eccentricities and knew how to navigate them with extreme graciousness. At the time I saw a lot of her in Hepburn, now I realize there was a lot more of Gardner to her. I had known that I had some mild symptoms and that others in my family had been diagnosed, but the amount of myself that I recognized in Hughes’ struggles (though physical cleanliness usually doesn’t trigger mine anymore) really made it impossible to keep ignoring. In hindsight I see how bad it really was then, and now am (once again usually) able to detect a flare-up coming on. Amongst other more personal things, seeing it for the first time when I did affected me deeply enough to start paying attention to and managing my symptoms. Though mine has never been close to the severity of his, being able to empathize with a character like Hughes made it easier for me to humanize and be patient with my own OCD, and to better understand new aspects as I experienced them, almost to have a place to put that part of myself. Mostly The Aviator has served as the ultimate tragic cautionary tale for most of my negative personality traits. So anyways my first flight class is on Friday…