I don’t know how many parts this will be - I’m very, very shaken with everything that happened, and I just need to vent somewhere - no place better than this, I guess?
So, let me start from the beginning: my job. I had a very, very hard week. I work with software development, and we were grinding a new feature. If you’re not familiar with the term, it means “our boss messed up timelines and something that would take a year needs to be ready in a month, or less” so I was basically working overtime. I got into the last train to go to my home, and I think it was about 11:30 PM, or something like this.
The train was almost empty, as it is usual from this time, and I drifted to sleep. I was woken up by a man, that I suppose it the security from the station, telling me that I had to leave. I panicked, of course, and checked the time - way later for any bus or any other public transport, and of course, it was not my station. I decided to pay for an Uber, and got home.
Here’s where things get weird. I entered my home, and I was still very, very tired. I though about taking a bath, but there was no energy in the apartment; my wife was not at the home, and my cellphone was dead, so I didn’t have even a flashlight to check things in the house. I decided to change clothes and go to sleep, and then see if I could fix things in the morning.
Of course, morning came, and still no sign of my wife. Energy still wasn’t back, so no chance to charge my phone. But then I noticed something even weirder - some, but not all, of my furniture was gone. The house was very, very dusty. So I decided it was indeed time to understand what happened, so I left the house and tried to find a place where I could buy a card to phone my wife (no idea how it works on other parts of the world, but where I live public phones accept a special card that you buy with credits, and then you can call people with it). Luckily I had money, because my card was rejected.
After two tries, I finally heard the voice of my wife - and she started to cry, and scream, and asked me where I was, and said to me to not leave, that she was going to meet me.
So, fast-forwarding a bit, she embraced me, asked me lots of things that I don’t remember. I could just say “calm down, what’s happening” and her face showed me the biggest worry I have ever seen in… well, anyone.
- “Nobody saw you for the last year. It’s been a whole year that you simply disappeared!”
- “That can’t be right… I remember working on my project, and then I got in the train… look, it was March 2nd, right? Isn’t today March 3rd?”
- “Yes… from year 2024”.
If panic could make a sound, I’m sure it was the sound I heard that time. How? I mean, it did explain everything but… how did that happened? Did I disappeared for exactly one year? And why did I remember everything, in detail, of what happened a year ago?
Now, I’m at the medic, we’re doing a lot of exams to understand if there’s something wrong with me. No signs of brain damage, no signs of mental problems, only higher levels of stress (which is understandable considering my situation now).
Of course, the company I used to work fired me; they were also acquired by a bigger company, so even if I wanted my job back, I probably will not have it; now I’m resting at my mother-in-law’s house, trying to understand what should I do, making a mental checklist of everything I need to do - get a new phone number, go to the bank to get a new card, and basically lots of other small, annoying things.
Did I time-travel to the future? Did this happen with anyone else?
I’m scared that it might be again, so every time I leave, I’m having someone follow me. It’s been two weeks already, and we’re now doing couple’s therapy to avoid the worst - I can feel my wife is shaken by everything that happened, considering she though, for a year, that I just abandon her.
I can also see that she still doesn’t fully trust me… which is probably the part that scares me the most.
Right now, she’s the only connection I have with my “older life” from a year ago.
I don’t want to lose her too…