manictraveller
Temporal Novice
I am seeking anyone's perspective that could confirm or inform 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 sense of well-being that was once myself--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 experienced 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 inexhaustable 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. This seemed to be the perfect ending to my odyssey: my dad and I reuniting, taking the passage together to return home and completing the healing process: metaphorically perfect. I started getting a weird sense--a good feeling, but weird nonetheless--that I was being guided by a higher power--I started sensing that every person around me was an angel, there to watch me. For instance, when I was at the airport, at the exact moment that I would get a profound revelation, the people sitting across from me, who had seemed to be awaiting something important from me, would cry out loud, expressing what seemed to be an ecstasy that I strangely shared with them. I had many curious encounters with strangers who talked to me like they knew me, in a gentle yet psychologically prodding 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 only a few hours after boarding, just like I sensed we would (my dad was trying to restrain me to my seat, which is something you shouldn't do to a manic person). So we got off in Pasco, WA. There, we stayed at a motel, where beyond just sensing that I had passed into a extraordinary realm of consciousness and being, I had begun to wonder where I was in time. I will presently relate the main tangible experience I can remember that made me aware of the time element. On every T.V. station in our motel room, there was in the upper lefthand corner of the screen, a small image of the United Nations logo, as if over night the media had been overtaken by a world government. My dad kept changing the station, because he didn't want anything to disturb me; however, the transparent U.N. logo was on every station. On one news channel, they were showing news footage from a station in China, and I noticed the U.N. logo was adapted to represent China, incorporating some Chinese characters into it. Then, on the Fox Sports Channel, on the front 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 olive branches. I was at once kind of excited and afraid that something had happened overnight that had brought us into a new era. I wanted confirmation that this was not just my perception, or a hallucination, so I asked my dad if he saw the U.N. symbol on every station too, describing the different detailed 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, although he seemed oblivious to everything else I was witnessing.
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 inexhaustable 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. This seemed to be the perfect ending to my odyssey: my dad and I reuniting, taking the passage together to return home and completing the healing process: metaphorically perfect. I started getting a weird sense--a good feeling, but weird nonetheless--that I was being guided by a higher power--I started sensing that every person around me was an angel, there to watch me. For instance, when I was at the airport, at the exact moment that I would get a profound revelation, the people sitting across from me, who had seemed to be awaiting something important from me, would cry out loud, expressing what seemed to be an ecstasy that I strangely shared with them. I had many curious encounters with strangers who talked to me like they knew me, in a gentle yet psychologically prodding 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 only a few hours after boarding, just like I sensed we would (my dad was trying to restrain me to my seat, which is something you shouldn't do to a manic person). So we got off in Pasco, WA. There, we stayed at a motel, where beyond just sensing that I had passed into a extraordinary realm of consciousness and being, I had begun to wonder where I was in time. I will presently relate the main tangible experience I can remember that made me aware of the time element. On every T.V. station in our motel room, there was in the upper lefthand corner of the screen, a small image of the United Nations logo, as if over night the media had been overtaken by a world government. My dad kept changing the station, because he didn't want anything to disturb me; however, the transparent U.N. logo was on every station. On one news channel, they were showing news footage from a station in China, and I noticed the U.N. logo was adapted to represent China, incorporating some Chinese characters into it. Then, on the Fox Sports Channel, on the front 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 olive branches. I was at once kind of excited and afraid that something had happened overnight that had brought us into a new era. I wanted confirmation that this was not just my perception, or a hallucination, so I asked my dad if he saw the U.N. symbol on every station too, describing the different detailed 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, although he seemed oblivious to everything else I was witnessing.
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.
