The slow descent

I have everything going for me, then why do I feel so empty ?” Is something I have heard from women ever so often.

 As I look around me, I see women, whether married, single, divorced or separated – all suffering from mild degrees of depression. What amazes me is that no one cares to get counselling. The ladies carry on, thinking that it’s the way life is. And people around them (friends, partners, husbands, parents, children) carry on too, sometimes stopping to lament over the constantly cribbing ladies, but otherwise, everyone’s lives go on.

Someone is depressed – and its perfectly acceptable to the society at large - because it has become so commonplace, and it has been more-or-less the trend over the generations.

Is it acceptable for a human being to feel that she is over-worked and under-nurtured ? Is it acceptable for a person to go about the business of living, all the time wondering if anything remotely happy or stimulating would ever come their way ?

I do not blame the people around solely. Somewhere the women also are to be blamed themselves. They take life too seriously. They just HAVE to have scintillating careers (after all, they studied and studied and studied all their youth). And of course, perfectly harmonious marriages (A marriage can NOT fail, it should NOT, it HAS to work , no matter what).  And please don’t forget the picture perfect little kids in osh kosh dungarees (I mean, how can life EVER be complete without those adorable, little munchkins ?).

So they plod on, sitting on their moralistic high horse, minding their own horse (and also covertly eyeing other women and THEIR horses, always comparing). Worry lines on forehead, frequent headaches, constantly aching backs.

They frown at anything that remotely resembles ‘having fun’. Anything ‘fun’ has to be looked upon suspiciously.  They work hard, they care, they nurture, they nourish. Not just their families, but even their careers.  There is nothing called ‘self’.

They are the responsible ones – the ones who cannot just zip, drive away for a beer with their buddies when they feel like. And if they dare to forget that rule, then disapproving glances and reprimanding, wagging fingers will convey that to them very effectively.

Very slowly, this conditioning gets seeped into women’s psyche and very gradually, women start realigning their priorities.

Five-ten years down the line - you get someone who has got over being a victim and started hunting around for someone to victimize.

So you have an unhappy person who starts believing that while no one can be as good as her, yet no one around her seems to understand her worth. While she gloats over her sacrificing, superior ways, she laments over the people she has to put up with. In her sad yet lofty mind, her husband does not care, her parents do not care, her children do not care, her neighbours hate her and her colleagues despise her. Not surprisingly, daily afternoon soaps are such a hit with women. They feed this very mentality shamelessly, unapologetically.

 And the slow descent into depression starts taking place. And not anyone cares enough to put brakes on it – not even the women themselves.