The world is real and so are the demons lurking in it, especially awaiting for the opportune moment to pounce upon us worldly folks in every post celebratory assertion of overwhelmingness. The post Pujo depression might be the most ’eminent’ one yet in this part of the world but elsewhere around the globe and even in the most vibrant alleys of our diverse country, the blues wander in abundance and not just in the glory of their hued being. They instead assert themselves in all their toxic mannerisms, manifesting as a disturbed state of the mind that threatens to ruin all the beauty preceding their ugly onset. Much like the post Puja depression that we can so relate to in all our miserable experience of it, these post occasion blues return to invade just about any sphere of celebration the minute the party lights begin to flicker. So whether it be the post holiday blues, the post trail unease of the mind or instead the even more intense and exhausting assertion of the gloom setting in after a wedding, this working of the demons is real and resilient enough to hold the potential of sabotaging just about every event it seeks to follow.
Indeed, no variation of the depressing experience is fancy enough to be intriguing, no assertion of it ever desirable despite how less or more severe the intensity of its working might be, but along one particular, mostly one-in-a-lifetime experience of what holds us spellbound for a considerable period of its occurrence, this insane characterisation by the blues presents as even more a prospect of ending up nowhere with nothing to fuss over. We are talking about the post wedding blues that threatens to derail relationships from the track of eternity and dislodge potentially blooming bonds from the foundation of trust, respect and commitment they had been made to stand upon to begin with. Despite its unlikely essence, depression does indeed finds its way into what marks the beginning of a new phase of life through marriage in a prevalence rather common than what we tend to attribute its cycle of occurrence as. It might be somewhat surprising that the post wedding blues is as real a thing as any other mode in which depression and desolateness reveals as, particularly since marriages and weddings in any part of the world are always fun filled, exciting affairs set on premises of auspiciousness. But it is this very basis of the excitement that celebrations like weddings derive all their delight from that makes them also as favourable a breeding ground for the blues to wreak havoc once the merrymaking subsides.
Source: The Knot
A real encounter of the life’s challenges might not yet be commanding the attention of newly wed couples looking still at life through their tinted glasses of lovestruck rosiness. But there’s still no resisting the gloom that forcefully sets upon their dreamy horizon once the frenzy of the wedding fairytale gradually wanes away. And as they find themselves more in the clutches of the mundane existence of the everyday ordinariness after days, weeks and months of intense, extensive, stressed but excited preps for the all important day of their live, it begins to crawl in in certainty or sometimes even just barge in with full force- that unmistakable, unappealing, immersive sense of a certain inexplicable misery forcing them out of their reverie of charms and dreams. They might be in it together, the lovebirds who in fact have vowed by this time to be by each other’s side in all of life’s pretty and not so pretty musings. But more often than not it is generally one of the pair who is more bogged down by that weight of the desolateness heaving upon their hearts, making matters at least a tad bit even more difficult to deal with. As often also is this experience of unpleasantness more accruing to the new bride than it is to the groom though this obviously is not any gender biased prejudice that the demons swear by.
Whatever though the level of assertion of the post wedding depression, it is almost always a singular strand of realisation that is what dawns it upon newly weds in the first place. Weddings have always been social, buzzing affairs of happenings and humans that calls for therefore intensive preparations to make the whole event a success. More so today when the age is one of competition and comparison, meaning that to make one’s wedding the grand, fond recollection of memory that it will be in the times to come, the level of planning that goes into the event is even more intense in its meticulousness than the intensity of what drives the introspections and all of settling into a new life of conjugal bliss.
Though of course not without its own free range of perks and benefits is this elongated process of the planning that usually involves both the bride and the groom to shape up the day that indeed is as significant to each one of them. This allows the couple a different expanse of scope altogether to bond and know each other even better, as regards not just their preferences but also their way of going about things that is what would matter the most in life. It’s almost like an adventure that the to be man and wife undertake together, along a process that spans a considerable length of time during which the buzz and business of it all is what keeps them occupied. Unaware therefore of what is to follow once all the importants are done and dusted with, the beaming couple looks forward to the days ahead in as much anticipation and excitement. Consider therefore their plight when all of a sudden they discover with shock that their life is not as hip and happening as it had been before and during their wedding. From relinquishing their status as being the center of all attraction to having to let go the vibe of the bustle entailing out of visiting friends and families and relatives and well wishers to having their calendars spaced out with no details to be attended to and no important chores to be ticked off from the all important wedding itinerary, they stare into that hollow mass of comparative nothingness that holds no promise, no allure, no hope even for them.
As the honeymoon phase gets over, both literally and metaphorically, and life’s more azure realities take over, it is almost a jolt delivered to the still dreamy eyed couple by now accustomed to living in the red of the roses to such measure that the upheaval caused by the blues leave them dejected. Devoid of the certain sense of purpose that had been characterising their lives for long now, the newly weds settle instead into an overbearing gloom stemming from the loss of their longfound mission of planning their own wedding. As the time dawns to instead honour the relationship and move on from the celebrations of it, they tend to plunge into that spiral of anxiety and melancholy and inactiveness leading themselves therefore to the mouth of that lurking danger of what categorise as depression.
Post wedding depression therefore is perhaps nothing more than life revealing its facets of harsh reality to such folks till now blissfully sidelining all real issues of the world. But that still does not explain as much the fact why it is still more exerting on brides than it is upon grooms even when both have committed that fallacy of overlooking reality in pursuing their fairytale fantasy. What turns out, as in commonly the case at least in our part of the world, it is always the woman getting married who is more affected by the welcome but intimidating still change ushered into her life. Expected to leave aside her parents and siblings behind and come to live instead amongst such people to whom she is almost a stranger, the challenges that entails the life of a new bride are numerous and overwhelming. Very vulnerable to losing her identity, or harbouring at least the stressful possibility of it in having to build her own home within another defined already by certain customs and conventions unfamiliar and perhaps even incomprehensible to her is the new wife of the man who continues to live in a family always his own.
In such cases when post wedding depression is truer for one spouse than it is for the other, it becomes even the more difficult to handle it. From refusing to recognise its existence because of being unaware of such a thing being very much real to even more profound reactions of blaming instead the one experiencing it, it is easy to see how the post wedding blues can end up being the blunders that can ruin relationships and mar the spirit of marriages. Equally offsetting can be the realisations that this particular expression of depression can lead to. In fact so intense can be the working of this feeling of emptiness or gloom or whatever negativity it manages to unfurl that the whole wedding ceremony can cease to hold any significance for the one traumatised by the after effects of it. But it also perhaps is a blessing in disguise that post wedding depression can turn out to be. In presenting newly wed couples the real challenges of life quite early on in their embarking along the new route of romance, it is these same blues that might deliver instead lessons in what relationships need to be in essence and how they ought to span out across all their goods and bads. It then becomes a crucial matter of the whole wedding journey itself, this experience of the unexpected in the form of something as oxymoronic as the woeful wallows submerging the chime of the ringing wedding bells that becomes indeed the platform from which strong, resilient, healthy and happy marriages go on to be for eternity.
