Love In The Times Of Melancholia

Things are difficult when you're married to an Army officer, add mental health struggle to the mix and you realise the definition of love was nothing how it was supposed to be

- Sukriti Shahi

For those who might be predicting an unhappy ending after reading the first two lines, it’s not a sad story. I’m (happily) married and still figuring out if my husband’s favourite colour is black or blue or grey. For the unaware, it keeps changing but I have made my peace with it because so is the definition of love, for both of us. I’ll be celebrating six years of being married to the man I met at a friend’s engagement and decided to take a leap of faith. No, that’s not the twist here because I believe everyone does that when they decide on forever.

Things were different for me from the beginning, I was marrying an Army officer, the life I had no clue about. I was 30 then and the idea of love had already narrowed down to mere basics–just trust each other through it and go with the flow. Little did I know that I was getting into a relationship that was demanding, emotionally and mentally. During one of our coffee dates, my husband said, “They say a soldier is brave, but the truth is we are brave, our partners need to be the bravest because we do our job, but they do a lot more than that, all alone, and it’s not easy.” I didn’t completely understand what it meant.