In 1867; a certain Isaac Newton, still trying to dodge falling apples, was working on the 3rd law of motion – ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ I’d like to discuss how this law worked for me, by giving me as much energy and inspiration to fight a disease that took so much from me.

But first, it’s only fair that I shed a little context on my life leading up to my depression diagnosis. When I was 10, I endured a life changing battle – one that I’m so proud to say I’ve won, but in no sense unscathed. My life up until November 2004 was, in search for a better word, easy. I had excelled athletically; with the physical strength of a boy that lived life to play football (soccer in your language) and run up mountains (Something that I did once to the despair of my dad, whose screams became all too distant to notice).

Then, on the first week of November I was ill. I writhed around in agony on the sofa for the better part of a week, having been diagnosed with gastroenteritis (a viral stomach bug) by a trainee doctor. Unfortunately, he made his diagnosis majorly wrong. As I lay there twisting in pain, my appendix was ready to rupture and change my life.

The next conversation I had with a medical professional went like this:

“Calum, the anesthetic hasn’t seemed to work yet. I’m going to have to put this mask on you to put you to sleep. Count down from 10 for me will you” “10…. 9….. 8……7…………”

My eyes closed, not to awaken again for another week. Unbeknownst to me, I had suffered peritonitis due to 2 litres of poison ripping through my body like a pinball shooting around a machine, smashing into healthy organs and cascading around me. My body couldn’t cope and shut down every organ (barring my heart and brain) whilst I lay there in a coma; able to hear fragments of my parents conversations and prayers but without the consciousness and physical ability to respond.

The following year was nowhere near as hard for me as it should have been, due to the most incredible family and friends. I will value their unequivocal love and support forever. From the moment I woke, the life I once knew was history and I had been shunted onto a new path.

This new life required me to learn how to speak and swallow again. I had so much muscle damage that it took me another week to build enough strength to turn my head and raise my arm.   Over the years, through physiotherapy, I’ve reached a stage where I can walk again and participate in life without many obvious impediments.

However, such a life altering moment wears down on you.

Like attrition, life chipped away at my resolve. At the age of 17; these small stones of not being able to play sports to the ability I once could, embarrassment of my situation, and the added pressure of fulfilling a life I felt fortunate to live, had carved a hole in me. It had worn me down and knocked me into a deep dark pool with no ladders. It had knocked me into depression. Being a naive kid that had never suffered from any signs of poor mental health, I did what too many people in my situation do.

I convinced myself that it’s just a phase and woke up every day, opened the wardrobe and grabbed another disguised face of happiness to wear. It wasn’t until late 2015 that I forced myself to visit the doctor, and received an official diagnosis. Sometimes in life, moments come along and you think ‘That’s changed everything’ these moments may include: Hearing the unimaginable beauty of Daft Punk for the first time. The first taste of Ben & Jerry’s that leaves you contemplating the meaning of Ice Cream.

For me, the diagnosis was one of them. I turned to Newton and realized that if this depression had been dragging me down for 4 years, then there’s at least 4 years of energy that I’m going to use to not only beat this illness but to completely obliterate it.

Step One

The first and arguably the most profound benefit of being diagnosed, was that it separated me from my illness. Up until that point, I thought my mood was as intrinsic to me as the birth scar on my neck, or my inability to perform tongue twisters.

Discovering that depression was an alien illness that had not only invaded me; but was making itself at home in my head, sipping a cup of tea whilst flicking through Netflix documentaries, gave me something to fight. It’s hard to fight a battle when you think you’re the enemy. Recognizing that depression wasn’t a fabric of my life, but more of dirty piece of cloth that had attached itself to me, I decided to reconnect to a former depression-free version of myself.

In a sort of premature mid-life crises, I began immersing myself with things that I had based my life around as a child. I started cycling again, surrounded myself with books from ranging from Fiction to Historical Fantasies, Memoirs to Classics, all in an attempt to rediscover what made me happy. I believe this to be such a vital aspect of maintaining a happy lifestyle. For one that is so simple, it’s often overlooked.

Whatever makes you happy, do it, do it as much as you can because the main person you’re responsible for keeping happy, is you.

For any True Detective fans out there “Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at” – Rust Cohle Matthew McConaughey’s nihilistic and detached character delivered many pertinent life lessons in True Detective, but this one grabbed my attention to most. Life is short, and if you can only master one thing in life, make sure it’s something you truly believe in.

Step Two

Use the resources around you to help others, and yourself in the process. I’m fortunate to be studying Marketing Communications & Advertising at Sheffield Hallam University – located in England. Sheffield is a great place, full of students and brimming with people that want to work collaboratively to end this mental health crisis. The depression I suffered with, gave me the inspiration to use my marketing modules to help break down the stigma attached to mental illness.

I, along with a team of students, have been working with a local mental health charity to redesign takeaway boxes, which incidentally are as familiar to students as krill is to whales. The new boxes (With different stick faces, catchphrases and colors on them) are designed to surprise and amuse students, encouraging them to share pictures online and using marketing to build awareness for the great work that Mind are doing in Sheffield.

Secondly, I’ve had the pleasure of working with the University ‘Social Enterprise’ team, to raise funds for a new concept. The concept (Cafe Branches) would be a local cafe that employed mental health practitioners to sit with and aid customers that wanted an informal chat about their health. In a similar-to-Uber style app, customers could choose their guide and see what debates and lectures were taking place.

Step Three

I became my own biggest fan. Imagine that battling depression is like a boxing match. It’s been a hard fight and you’ve taken some fair blows, you’re tiring and struggling to keep your breath after 8 hard rounds of sparring. The bell rings and you go back to your corner, sit on the stool and wait for the sweat to be wiped away from your brow. In jumps the trainer, but instead of Paulie (Rocky Balboa reference), it’s actually you, re-energising and demanding that you believe in yourself.

‘It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep on going etc etc’. Big yourself up every day, be biased, be encouraging. It doesn’t matter how trivial it is. Sometimes I give myself a pat on the back when I choose the perfect song to listen to, or even when I add a new word to my vocabulary. Constant self appraisal is the perfect antidote to the self-loathing and self-ridicule I used to partake in when I was at my deepest points, and I attribute it to my sanguine (Giving myself a pat on the back for that one) attitude now.

So back to Newton; if his law states that for everything in life, there’s an equal and opposite force, then I believe depression brings with it the tools to defeat it. Depression can rob you of the happiness you once thought was your default setting, so go back to the very things that brought you that happiness. Depression spreads false rumors and doubts in your head, so do the opposite and big yourself up as much as Kanye does (Just maybe not as publicly).

Unlike many of the other WishDish articles, I do not have an extraordinarily amazing message or inspirational story. I’m just a simple guy who likes to drink beer on the weekends and eat good food.

So I come to you today as a poor college student with an omelette prep guide. Eggs! Eggs simply put, are a wonder-food (at least for me). Eggs are incredibly nutritious! Eggs are moderately low in fat and practically devoid of fat when eaten as whites only without the yolk.

A single egg is moderately high in Vitamin-D and Vitamin-B along with over 6 grams of protein. An egg is an amazing post-workout meal to help expedite the recovery of muscles, and if you’re cutting and want to reduce carbs, eggs are a go-to meal.

This is all considering not to mention, they’re relatively inexpensive along with being fast and easy to cook.

An easy way to remove the yolk from a cracked egg is to take an empty water bottle, squeeze it, and vacuum up the yolk.

Omelette

It’s like a taco made of eggs. The omelette is the poster child of what to do with eggs. You can pack it with your favorite ingredients be it vegan or a hearty filling of meat.

I prefer my omelette with sun-dried tomatoes (but these are expensive so I usually skip out on these, but they add a dimension of flavor), mushrooms, spinach, and finely chopped honey-glazed ham. My family has always been a ham family. We go ham about every single holiday be it Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, father’s day, and more. That’s right, you won’t find turkey in my household on Thanksgiving day.

That aside however, you can simply fill your omelette to your heart’s desire.

Many novice omeletteers will simply douse their ingredients with olive oil and heat before addition to their omelette, and I’m telling you there’s so much more you can do. Heat the pan to medium high and olive oil to a light coverage of the pan, a few holes in coverage is fine. Add the bulkiest ingredients first (mushrooms, ham, etc). And let that cook for about a minute before adding the smaller ingredients. Now, to take this filling to flavortown (thank you Guy Fieri), add a small cut of butter around the amount you would put on two pieces of bread at a restaurant. Keeping in the idea of healthy eating, this is a decently minimal amount of extraordinary leaps in flavor.

I enjoy adding fresh parley or thyme along with just a dash of lemon juice. Finish with a pinch of salt (or seasoning salt if you like that) and pepper. Once the ingredients have reached a softer consistency, they’re good to take off the heat and onto a plate for the time being. For the actual preparation of the omelette, wipe your pan with a paper towel and add another cover of olive oil. Heat to medium while you crack open three to four eggs into a bowl. Beat them until there’s a very cohesive consistency.

Don’t over-beat them. Add to the hot pan. Cover the whole bottom of the pan and let the eggs cook.

To keep the bottom from burning and over cooking, create small gaps in the omelette by breaking it apart with the spatula and allowing it to refill with egg. Once the holes begin to no longer fill, remove from heat immediately as the residual heat will cook the eggs. This is the perfect time to add cheese if you want (I enjoy smoked gouda, but that’s also expensive).

Now add the ingredients onto only half the egg, fold over, and plate. Congratulations, you have an omelette. To add extra flare, make a whites only egg omelette, then add the yolks in right on top of the ingredients before folding to create a gooey and creamy omelette. Afterwards, sprinkle on a light pinch of cayenne pepper for a kick along with fresh chives to make it look fancy.

Being happy sounds so simple.

We’ve grown up learning “happy” as a common adjective to describe our mood and how we’re feeling. We are continuously finding ourselves evaluating whether we’re happy or sad, but sometimes we can lose sight of what makes us happy.

Whether it’s love, friendships, school, or work, it’s so ridiculously easy to get caught up in something else and completely forget what makes you happy. It sounds cheesy as anything, but I’ve realized in the last month or so, the only person that can truly make you happy is YOU.

I believe that you really have to lose sight of what makes you happy to end up finding it again, and I’ve experienced this first hand. Love is also a word that sounds so simple. We say we “love” so many things on a daily basis, but there is so much more to love than just feeling affectionate.

With love comes an endless amount of challenges.

I’ve only been in love once in my entire life, and it’s the most indescribable feeling in the world. After a fourteen-month relationship and whirlwind of emotions, fights, good times, bad times, weird times, awkward times, and everything in between, our relationship came to an end.

It was hard to pinpoint where our problems were coming from, but we both knew that we couldn’t bear to keep making each other unhappy. It was mutual, because we both realized how unhappy we were, but we had been ignoring it.

Sometimes, in relationships, you get so caught up in another person that you solely depend on them for everything, but mostly for your happiness. I had completely lost sight of what made me happy and who I was.

If anyone had told me this during any part of our relationship, I would’ve brushed it off and just kept thinking at the very least, I still had my boyfriend to fall back on. It took my lowest low and the very bottom for me to realize that I wasn’t necessarily unhappy with my relationship, I was unhappy with myself.

It’s a dreadful moment that you don’t want to come to terms with, but once I did I could literally feel a weight being lifted off of my shoulders. I spent the last fourteen months neglecting relationships with friends, neglecting my own feelings, and ultimately giving my all into a relationship that wasn’t giving back to me.

I wanted to believe every piece of advice I was given in the first weeks of my heart-breaking split, but I just couldn’t with the way I felt. I was still in love with my ex-boyfriend, and that wasn’t going to change right away.

I knew time would be the best thing for me, but who is ever really excited for time to make them feel better? I would’ve paid a million dollars to speed up the clock and fast-forward any amount of time just to swallow the grieving period and never look back. Boy, am I thankful that I didn’t have a million dollars and that speeding up time isn’t a real thing.

Time can be a cruel thing, but in the end time is our friend.

I learned more about myself in a month than I ever had in my whole life. Happiness depends completely on you, not anyone else. If you can learn to be happy with yourself, then the rest will work itself out.

To some people, it’s a foreign thought to even have to evaluate their happiness. Throughout the deterioration of my relationship, I would always look at people I knew and wonder to myself how they’re so happy, whether they were single, going through a hard time, or just had nothing exciting going on. I was plain jealous.

I wanted to know why that couldn’t be me and why I couldn’t have it figured out, even when I felt like I had it all, boyfriend included.

Happiness surely doesn’t come easy to some, but I promise that the sooner you start searching for it within yourself, the sooner you will become the person you want to be.

(Written by Rebecca Rosen)

It’s January, that lovely time of year where it seems everyone you know and love (or maybe just know) is setting goals for themselves for the new year; do more, eat less, that sort of thing. There is an overwhelming pressure to somehow be better regardless of how bad or good you thought you were in the past year. I love New Years, don’t get me wrong but the pressure, the pressure is what kills it for me.

It’s a general convention that people do much of their growing during their years at university; college is the place where people really “discover themselves” and “find their purpose.”

But what about those of us who have found ourselves already? I am not the type of person who constantly tries to reinvent myself. In fact for a very long time I was a creature of habit and to stray from that habit would be the worst thing in the history of the universe, ever.

In high school I decided to leave my comfort zone, do things for me, develop interests outside of the ones I had figured would characterize me for the rest of eternity. I learned some very important things about myself along the way; music is my everything, coffee is my second everything and black trumps all other colors by far.

Jokes aside, I did some real self discovery in high school, especially over the course of my senior year, and to be candid I’m pretty happy with what I found. I learned what was and what wasn’t
important and have channeled much of my energy this year at university into putting the ideals I developed over my last year in high school into practice. Two years of too much people pleasing, too much worrying about how others perceived me and too little attention paid to what makes me happy made for one extremely unhappy high school junior.

I was constantly anxious, it seemed like there wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t worrying about something and I realized I cannot and will not live the rest of my life that way.

To live my life essentially in constant fear and unpleasantness is not to live at all, it was just existing.

Starting in twelfth grade I finally began to live my life for me. Hobbies I never took too seriously became passions of mine. I threw myself into the things and relationships that I cared about and allowed myself to be completely open and vulnerable for the first time in my life. I stopped caring about what other people had to say about me behind my back and started to prove them wrong through my actions, my words and my choices.

Living my life for me did not come easy and I had to learn that my happiness as a number one priority was more important than those few extra toxic people in my life that would have lingered otherwise. It took me a very long time to accept the following universal truths: a) people change b) things change c) no matter how much a and b frighten you, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about them. I’m constantly evolving, growing and for lack of a better word changing and that’s ok.

Things I simply thought were important to keep in mind during my senior year are now principles I live by from day to day, the people in my life are ones that want me to be a part of theirs as much as I want them to be a part of mine, life is good.

So really what I’m getting at here is it’s okay to be okay with who you are or what you’ve been working at already. I’ve just started a new chapter in my life hundreds of miles away from the place I call home and I’m expected to set a “goal” for myself to “accomplish” over the next year? Yeah right. I’m just living life.