manictraveller
Temporal Novice
I am seeking anyone's perspective that could inform or confirm my interpretation of an experience I had last summer. After struggling through a debilitating depression which had reached its climax my senior year of college, I finally decided to run away and start my life over. I was seeking God, as well as the youthful energy and happiness and sense of well-being that was once my self--I felt like I was either going to kill myself, or run away to escape the abusive and depressive environment in which I had been raised. I couldn't even think; my whole body was shutting down, and I felt like I was suffocating inside myself, about to implode. Without addressing the spiritual metaphors and implications of the event in my life, I will skip ahead to what I later assessed to be a manic episode, during which I seemed to either be living at a future time, or had witnessed complex hallucinations (i.e., "visions") of a new world era.
When I had left St. Louis, going to the west coast, all I could think about was my own bright future, leaving the past behind (literally and figuratively). The bus was an obvious metaphor to me of my passage, although a physical medium for transporting me to an entirely different place in time. Having crossed almost 3 time zones, combined with my renewed excitement, I had little sleep. I later read that east-west travel, has, curiously, been found to induce episodes of mania in bipolar people (unless one keeps one's sleep cycle adjusted according to home time)--before this episode, I had not realized I was bipolar.
The first week after my arrival was, although I did not realize it, a build up to full-blown mania. My mind was opened up, I had inexaustible energy, everything was so clear to me--things that had been beyond my imagination formerly. None of what I was experiencing related to time travel, however, until the trip back home. My dad, hearing that I was acting strangely and was, perhaps, "in danger," arrived to take me back home. This seemed to be the perfect ending to an idyll: my dad and I reuniting, taking the passage together back home--metaphorically perfect. I started getting a weird sense--a good feeling, but weird at the same time--that I was being guided by a higher power--I started sensing that every person around me was an angel, there to watch me. At the exact moment, for instance, when I was at the airport, that I would get a profound revelation, the people sitting across from me started crying, and smiling, as if from a deep sense of joy. I had many strange encounters with strangers who talked to me like they knew me, in a gentle yet guiding voice, asking me questions about things that were on my mind and about my history, so skillfully, I perceived they knew me and could read my mind. My dad and I would have taken the train, but we got kicked off in Washington, just like I sensed we would, because we caused a scene. There, we stayed at a motel. This is the main tangible experience I had that felt like I had entered into a new era: on every T.V. station in our room, there was in the corner of the screen, a small image of the United Nations logo, as if overnight the media had been overtaken by the United Nations. My dad kept changing the station, and on one news channel, they were showing footage from a Chinese news station, and I noticed the U.N. logo on the Chinese station was adapted to represent China, with some Chinese characters incorporated into the logo. Then, on the Fox Sports Channel, on the front of the sports desk was a giant gold emblem of the United Nations, and I noticed it must be the United States version of the logo, with the outline of the United States incorporated into the globe with the olive branches. I was at once kind of excited and afraid that something had happened overnight that had brought us into a new era, and I asked my dad laying down on the bed next to mine if he saw the United Nations symbol on every station, and I described the different versions I had seen, and he said that he did, in fact, see them, but he said this matter-of-factly, and added, "it's always been like that." That made me think that my dad was existing in a parallel universe, or something, and I had crossed over.
We miraculously scraped up enough money to fly back home on a jet. While on the plane, I was led to believe by certain cues from the strangers I had met earlier that I was being taken to the last phase of my journey. It turned out to just be my old home, where everything from my past returned me to the familiar, ordinary drudgery, leaving me entirely disoriented. After taking valerian, i was able to sleep finally, and I began returning to my former depressive self, although this time, I was really confused about the things I had witnessed and experienced while manic. I began immediately looking for answers, and my quest continues.
When I had left St. Louis, going to the west coast, all I could think about was my own bright future, leaving the past behind (literally and figuratively). The bus was an obvious metaphor to me of my passage, although a physical medium for transporting me to an entirely different place in time. Having crossed almost 3 time zones, combined with my renewed excitement, I had little sleep. I later read that east-west travel, has, curiously, been found to induce episodes of mania in bipolar people (unless one keeps one's sleep cycle adjusted according to home time)--before this episode, I had not realized I was bipolar.
The first week after my arrival was, although I did not realize it, a build up to full-blown mania. My mind was opened up, I had inexaustible energy, everything was so clear to me--things that had been beyond my imagination formerly. None of what I was experiencing related to time travel, however, until the trip back home. My dad, hearing that I was acting strangely and was, perhaps, "in danger," arrived to take me back home. This seemed to be the perfect ending to an idyll: my dad and I reuniting, taking the passage together back home--metaphorically perfect. I started getting a weird sense--a good feeling, but weird at the same time--that I was being guided by a higher power--I started sensing that every person around me was an angel, there to watch me. At the exact moment, for instance, when I was at the airport, that I would get a profound revelation, the people sitting across from me started crying, and smiling, as if from a deep sense of joy. I had many strange encounters with strangers who talked to me like they knew me, in a gentle yet guiding voice, asking me questions about things that were on my mind and about my history, so skillfully, I perceived they knew me and could read my mind. My dad and I would have taken the train, but we got kicked off in Washington, just like I sensed we would, because we caused a scene. There, we stayed at a motel. This is the main tangible experience I had that felt like I had entered into a new era: on every T.V. station in our room, there was in the corner of the screen, a small image of the United Nations logo, as if overnight the media had been overtaken by the United Nations. My dad kept changing the station, and on one news channel, they were showing footage from a Chinese news station, and I noticed the U.N. logo on the Chinese station was adapted to represent China, with some Chinese characters incorporated into the logo. Then, on the Fox Sports Channel, on the front of the sports desk was a giant gold emblem of the United Nations, and I noticed it must be the United States version of the logo, with the outline of the United States incorporated into the globe with the olive branches. I was at once kind of excited and afraid that something had happened overnight that had brought us into a new era, and I asked my dad laying down on the bed next to mine if he saw the United Nations symbol on every station, and I described the different versions I had seen, and he said that he did, in fact, see them, but he said this matter-of-factly, and added, "it's always been like that." That made me think that my dad was existing in a parallel universe, or something, and I had crossed over.
We miraculously scraped up enough money to fly back home on a jet. While on the plane, I was led to believe by certain cues from the strangers I had met earlier that I was being taken to the last phase of my journey. It turned out to just be my old home, where everything from my past returned me to the familiar, ordinary drudgery, leaving me entirely disoriented. After taking valerian, i was able to sleep finally, and I began returning to my former depressive self, although this time, I was really confused about the things I had witnessed and experienced while manic. I began immediately looking for answers, and my quest continues.