I have a secret: I have a superpower. I can travel in time. I need no police box, no DeLorean. I slip backwards and forwards with ease. Now we are mid-January and the demarcation between this year and the last is more defined. But this is an illusion. Time has no meaning for me; the passing of the hours and minutes is tangled and I find myself in another January and in another place. I have been there and back again before, although the taste and smell of it all doesn’t feel quite right and it changes its form and mutates each time I fall between the cracks in time. It is a selective exchange of moments. I cannot grasp hold of the precious memories that undoubtedly lie somewhere in my brain. I feel the pain of every fiery recollection. I’m hot behind the eyes and prickly in my chest.

And I get stuck. I am in flux.

‘Medication resistant bipolar depression’ – this where I’m at and this special gift is the key to time travel – written as clear as day on my latest assessment report. Resistance sounds as if I’m somehow deliberately denying medication its shot at working. Am I resistant to change? Because being a time traveller is a stubborn state of affairs. It preys on the past and masks the future. The only way to grasp the future is to commune with the past. It is a seductive voice and I believe its suffocating caress.

Every new year presents a chance for change, a change for the better. But when you are depressed, change seems impossible. You assess the year gone by and begin to categorise the mistakes, the missed opportunities, and reflect on how differently and consistently you have behaved in the face of adversity. The sharp blade of despair digs ever deeper into your skin as if attempting to tattoo your failings permanently into the flesh. I feel like Guy Pearce in Memento, tattooing his skin so as to find a way to unlock his past and guide him through his present. When you have the ability to time travel, you need markers to help you on your way. But these markers are like headstones in a graveyard, monuments detailing my failings and inadequacies. When I am well, I try to chart a course between them, acknowledging them, but not allowing them any purchase on my life. But when you’re depressed, you don’t have a map to help you navigate around these vast obstacles.

Time travel has its own economy with a dubious exchange rate. You make sound investments when you are well and save money for troubled times ahead. But you can never save enough. You spend one currency only to find yourself needing to exchange it for something else. And you find yourself unable to buy the things that enrich your life: the present insists that you spend on the future, but the past demands that you cash in your savings and exchange it for non-existing tender. There is no guide as to how to spend it. You cannot go to your bank for advice. You cannot keep track of your outgoings because each time you transition from one time to another, you pay a varying amount of emotional tax. The further back you go, the more tax you pay. Soon you find yourself broke with a huge overdraft that you cannot hope to pay back.

Time travel has its own passport. It is full of stamps that remind you where you have been. When you are well, you can tell yourself never to visit certain places again. When you are in crisis, you find yourself being compelled to return to old ground. You get repeated stamps for the same destinations. These are not destinations that any sane person would want to revisit. You return to the scene of many crimes again and again. If you try to force yourself to travel to pastures new, a guard stops you at the border. You feel like a criminal barred from the delights people tell you are out there. Sometimes you can get as far as the arrivals lounge, only to find that, when you try to exit, there is nothing but an empty space waiting for you. And don’t even think about trying to locate your luggage: your baggage has been scattered.

I have a secret: I have a superpower. I am a time traveller. I can see your future, but I cannot see my own. I can see the end of time, but not the beginning.