Trying my best to put up with my sexuality

There isn't anything wrong with you, and the sooner you figure that out, that happier you'll be. You can still have a family (through adoption or other methods), and I don't see any reason why you can't be a pilot either. You aren't a novelty, you are a person (who is just as normal and legitimate as anyone else). It can be hard to break the mentality that being gay makes us "weird" or "wrong", but just because you feel something doesn't make it true.

 

I think we can all come up with lots of reasons why being gay is a disadvantage. But if you scratch below the surface of those reasons, do they really stand up? Really?

Yes - this is something that makes you different, and is seen by some as being negative. But the sooner you can develop the attitude that those people (that see being gay as a negative) are stupid and irrelevant, the better.

What is 'family' after all? How do you define it? If you only consider a 'family' as being a man and a woman who are married and have their own offspring through natural conception, then YOU have created a very narrow definition of what a familiy is. YOU are creating the limitation for yourself.

As for your career, I don't necessarily see the issue either. Is a gay Irishman less likely to get a job as a pilot in the middle east than a straight Irishman? Sure, you couldn't live there as an openly gay man (at least not right now) but would you be living there anyway?

I don't think you should be setting these self imposed limitations on yourself. Live your life as you think you should live it, and see what happens. Your orientation dictates who you are going to be attracted to, but that's about it. Most other aspects of your life (school, job, where you live, what you do for fun) don't have anything to do with it.