It's fitting I finished my Finding Kansas Revisited project last week as this week... this week is wedding week. My wedding week. It's odd to write that. Surreal, really. I never thought I'd write such a thing. I never thought this would happen. But it is. This week. And... I can't believe it.
Last week, I did finish that book project, but I also saw a post on Facebook of the standings sheet of a bowling league I used to be on. It was from 2003, and I figured that would be the place to start this week as I look back on how I got to this week.
Seeing that scoresheet brought back a flood of memories, but it was hard to truly appreciate the scope of it. This was April 30th, 2003, and I was still a bit under nine months from learning I was on the autism spectrum. In reality, this sheet almost happened at the halfway point of my current life, and almost everything was different in my life then, but it was steeped in routine.
It was Wednesday, so my girlfriend at the time, Emily, and I probably had pizza earlier in the night, and then we both bowled in the early league before I would bowl in the late league which this sheet is from. While the routine was nice, there was a high level of frustration in my life. I knew something was different about me, but I didn't know it was going to be such a seismic event when I'd find out, but there was also a severe level of angst as I wondered what the future would hold.
Perhaps most 20-year-olds are in a race to figure out life, and I too was one of those. With that, however, came many times of being unable to communicate my hopes, dreams, and emotions. Emily would often bring up the future and my future, then, would just come back to racing. It was my only focus. I knew I'd make it in racing. Granted, I thought I'd be the next multi-time champion of any given major series, but so often Emily was looking for an answer that included her and, being on the autism spectrum and not diagnosed, I had no idea that she was looking for herself to be included in the answer.
This scoresheet has turned out to be a time capsule for me as I was just over a month from having everything in my life change. In June, I'd move from my mom's to my dad's, and my childhood pet, Missy the Maltese, would pass away at the age of 16. It was then a blue until October, when I'd move to Vegas for a month to instruct at a racing school, and then the fateful month of December when I'd receive my diagnosis.
I'm not sure if others can have such a profound moment as I've had by getting lost in the names of that standings sheet. If my life were an interstate highway system, that moment of that sheet would be the sign warning of a fork ahead. Everything was about to change, and before I'd get anywhere near the celebration that's going to come on Saturday at my wedding, the dark days would have to be endured.
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