How is a bride supposed to feel? Excited, nervous, ecstatic? I was asked "How are you feeling now?" countless times on the big day and afterwards, and I could not figure out the 'expected' answer.
"Much the same as earlier," I said at first. After all, the Guy and I have been a couple for what seems like a long time. Our feelings for each other haven't changed - we only gained legal and societal acceptance as a family. But this answer was met with surprise and scepticism. (Was there a tinge of disapproval, a suspicion that I didn't deserve to be a bride, seeing that I took the responsibility so lightly?)
So I changed my answer to "Great. Wonderful." To my surprise, that brought surprised reactions too. "Really?" "Great?"
"What do they want to hear?" I asked the Guy. Like a good Indian bride, I wanted to be pleasing to everyone, so I wanted to give people the answer they expected. "Probably that you are uncomfortable, nervous, that you'll take time to get used to it, that you're finding it difficult to handle it..."
"Oh," I said, trying to imagine what it would have been like if he'd lived together with all his family. "But even then, I doubt I'd be uncomfortable. Your people are so nice, they'd make a fuss of me and pamper me." But as the Guy says, that's not what people want to hear. And I'm not probably not feeling the way they expect me to. Not that that's a bad thing.
Also, I assume not everyone expects to hear the same thing - probably I goofed up by saying I'm not feeling special to the people who expected me to feel great. There goes my ambition of pleasing everyone.
So how do I feel? Ecstatic? No, wrong word. Euphoric, maybe. Happy that my dream has come true. Content that I now have everything I wanted. Complete.
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