Taylor Swift and Me

I love Taylor Swift. I love her music. I love her style. I love her.
This is a common fact for those who know me well but I don't know if I've ever brought it up on this blog. Taylor Swift is important to me because her music has helped me through some of the hardest and most beautiful moments of my life. To help you understand, I'm going to get very specific and drop a few names from my past. Get ready. This post is also going to be long and detailed. I will leave very few stones unturned. You will know a lot about me and my relationships by the time you're done reading. I hope you stick around until the end because it will all have the moral.

In 2008, I was on MySpace looking at my friend Taylor's (weird coincidence) page and all of a sudden I heard this country sounding guitar. I looked at her profile song and there was a picture of a girl, not much older than me, with blonde curly hair. I listened to the song titled, "Teardrops On My Guitar" I listened and related immediately because at that time, and for many years before, I had been pining over a guy by the name of Scotty Snarr. He was a jerk to me but I wanted him to love me. The song didn't fit perfectly because we were not friends. In fact, we were enemies. It was a classic case of "Helga from Hey Arnold" love sickness. I listened to this song many times and then looked into the singer whose name was Taylor Swift.

Fast forward to when I had to break up with Cory Wiley. Corey Wiley and I dated for many months my sophomore year of his school. Cory was a senior and we did not mesh well. I believe the reason I dated him was he had a shocking resemblance to George Harrison. He made me laugh in the beginning but then we started to get bored with each other. I can't say a bad word about Cory because he treated me really well and loved me very much, it just wasn't mutual. Breaking up with Cory took two tries and my girl Tay Swift was there for both. In the weeks leading up to our break up, I listened to "Breathe" on repeat. With the lyric, "Never wanted this, never wanna see you hurt, every little bump in the road I tried to swerve, people are people and sometimes it doesn't work out, nothing we say is gonna save us from the fall out." I knew I had to do it. We cried. We broke up. It was long and painful. I literally sent him into the cold.
A couple of weeks later, I got very lonely. I wanted him back and my girl had just released a song called "Back to December." This song was perfect. We broke up in December. He gave me roses. I left them there to die. It was freaky how accurate this song was.
"You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye."
We dated for another 2 months, went to prom, and I broke up with him over text after not hanging out with him for an entire month. Not my proudest moment but the whole relationship was a lesson in not settling because of loneliness. I'm sorry for hurting you, Cory.

The section of my life so incredibly influenced by Taylor Swift was when I in and falling out of love with Matthew James Ross. The summer before my senior year of high school, I began dating Matt. Reluctantly at first, I slowly but surely fell in love with this kid and fell hard. We spent almost every day together for six months. He opened doors, he paid for meals, he called every night. He was a real gentleman, we were a real "we" and I was in love. I told him everything and for the first time I saw a future with someone. We fought and joked and kissed. Our song was "Just A Kiss" by Lady Antebellum but my song for him was "Mine" by T-Swizzle. At a time when was still very angry with the way my father lived his life, I didn't want anything to do with love before Matt. I had an idea that everyone that loved me would just leave when things got tough. I truly believed Matt wouldn't. This song is describing exactly that. "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter, you are the best thing that's ever been mine." I would have tattooed that onto my skin at that point of my life.

Months later, Matt would leave. We were in my 2004 Pontiac Grand Am parked in his driveway. He stared at me for a long time with the words, "I'm sorry" riddled in his gazed. Eventually, I asked him, "Are you breaking up with me?" Then the words escaped his eyes and tears escaped mine. After a minute of shock and tears, I began saying, "If we're breaking up, get out of my car." I drove home but weirdly stopped crying almost immediately after I turned off of his street. It was strange but I think I was in shock.
For the next month, the song "Last Kiss" would become my anthem. This was so perfect I couldn't handle it. The bridge of this song makes me cry even to this day. "So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep, I'll feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe, and I'll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are." That is one of the most beautiful break up lyrics of all time. Another lyric of the song that I followed to a T was, "So I'll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes." I had a sweatshirt of his that I sobbed into for a week before giving it back to him at lunch one day. This song helped me cry it out and really feel the pain of losing someone you love.

Soon my sadness turned to anger. Matt and I were also in the same youth group. Our friends were all friends. So I fell in love with a song called, "The Story of Us." The lyric that I remember singing into my hairbrush before school was, "I'm starting to think one day I'll tell the story of us how I was losing my mind when I saw you here, but you held your pride like you should've held me" That lyric was perfect already but became even more perfect when he later told me he didn't get back with me because he didn't want his parents, who told him that breaking up with me was a mistake, to be right. An honorable mention from this song, "This is looking like a contest of who can act like they careless." Because holy shit it was.

In high school, Taylor released a song called "Mean." "Mean" was the song that represents my middle school experience. This song was not out when I was in middle school but once I heard it, it became my anthem. "Some day I'll be living in a big ole city, and all you're ever gonna be is mean, some day I'll be big enough so you can't hit me and all you're ever gonna be is mean."  Quick update, I did move to a big ole city and the people that made my life hell, are still just mean.

Now I'm going to leave a name out for the sake of respect:

When I was 19, I had a sexual relationship with a 23 year old man who thought I was too young to date. Let me re-phrase that. I was too young to date but old enough to fuck. To make matters worse, he did the same to many of my friends and we all were too naive to know until it was too late. He really hurt me for a long time and my song for him was "Dear John." This song is, again, PERFECT, "Dear John, I see it all now, it was wrong, don't you think 19's too young to be played by your dark twisted games when I loved you so, I should've known...never impressed by me acing your tests, all the girls that you've run dry have tired lifeless eyes cause you burned them out." It even said my age, people! She is the goddess of lyrics.

Then something magical happened. RED came out. RED is my favorite album, even more so than 1989. This is her best break up album. This came out in a time of my life that I was so confused about love. I thought the only thing it did was hurt you and leave you in the gutter wounded, salty. This album gave me a new hope. RED taught me that we all hurt but that's not a reason to stop being yourself. I had about 3 flings in the time of RED and I identified a bunch of different songs with each. But never really connected too deeply with the actually stories of RED.

Then came along Charles Wayne Boyles and RED made sense. Especially the song, "Red", the opening lyric, "Loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street, faster than the wind passionate as sin ending so suddenly." I knew from the beginning this thing wouldn't end too well so that song understood how it felt to be that in love that quickly.

After our break up, the song "All Too Well" became a trigger song. I still cry when this song comes on in the shower. This song contains my favorite lyric not only of Taylor Swift's but of all time. "You tell me about your past thinking your future was me."
This song captures gaining and losing love in a way no one else has been able to for me. For many months, this lyric, "Time won't fly it's like I'm paralyzed by it, I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it, after plaid shirt days and nights where you made me your own." was the way I felt about this failed relationship. I had become used to having him around to comfort me and help me. I lost myself in making him happy and forgot that I'm a person with needs to and he didn't meet them. I asked for a letter, he gave me a picture of a lamp.

Then something else happened while I was in the middle of this odd on and off sexual and emotional relationship with Charles. 1989 came to the world in screaming color. "Out of the Woods" became my song for him. The song asked two simple questions, "Are we out of the woods yet?...Are we in the clear yet?" This relationship felt like that song sounded. When would we really be done with each other? When would we finally move on? When would we get over the fact that this thing wasn't going to work?
"When the sun came up you were looking at me." reminding me of the many nights we spent together followed by many mornings. Charles was the first relationship that felt adult-like. We didn't have parents telling us we couldn't be in each others rooms or that we couldn't touch on the couch. I woke up next to him often and felt so happy.
The demise of Charles and I could only be explained in one song. Any guesses? "Clean" is the last track on her album and was on repeat on my iPod during the Megabus ride home after we decided not to speak anymore. "It was months and months of back and forth, you're still all over me like a wine stained dress I can't wear anymore." and "By morning, gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean." were among the best parts. I was finally free to live the life I wanted without pining over him. It felt good and this song helped me feel better.

Another song I must mention is Blank Space. This song was huge in my life. I listened to this song at least 3 times a day. This song came out at a time when I was feeling like every relationship I'd been in was meant to burn down in flames. Though she wrote this satirically, I related. All my relationships seemed to end in similar ways and this song sort of followed the pattern. I would often replace the lyric, "Find out what you want, be that girl for a month," with "be that girl for 3 months." because many of my flings lasted exactly 3 months, no joke. Singing this song was great way to get out all that aggression I felt for my failed relationships. It helped me laugh at them and see them as just blips on the radar of my life.

On December 10th, 2015, I received a call that David Michaels had died. He was my best friend for over 2 years in Ohio. We got in a fight of sorts and I walked out of his life. 10 months later, he killed himself and I'm still having a hard time forgiving myself. Much to my surprise, Taylor Swift helped this situation as well. Her song, "I Wish You Would," described how I felt. "I wish you would come back, wish I never hung up the phone like I did, I wish you knew that I'll never forget you as long as I live, and I wish you were right here right now, its all good, I wish you would...I wish we could go back and remember what we were fighting for and I wish you knew that I miss you too much to be mad anymore, wish you were right here right now, it's all good, I wish you would." Those were the words running through my brain for 3 months.

Today, I'm "with" someone and still find songs of hers that remind me of him. The song, "Come Back Be Here" which is a bonus track from RED is my current song. This one is a bit sadder than I feel but she captures the feeling of long distance very well. "We stumble through the long goodbye, one last kiss then catch your flight, right when I was just about to fall, I told myself, don't get attached, but in my mind I play it back, spinning faster than the plane that took you, this is when the feeling sets in, I don't wanna miss you like this." Spot on for the days I haven't heard from him in days, wondering if things will be the same when he gets back.

Okay. We've made it to the end and the moral. Taylor Swift is more than a pop star to me and many people. She has taught me to be honest, feel what you feel and turn it into art. So if anyone ever wonders what my obsession is with her, I can tell them to read this and understand how when I listen to her music, I feel like someone is on my side. I feel the pain in the songs and then often have a moment of clarity. She's grown up with me. I feel like she goes through the exact same feeling and emotions as me but years earlier and then releases the album as I'm going through it. It's a magical effect she has on my life and I can't wait to grow old with her and her music.
Also I might get my hair cut like her.......

Thanks for listening. Come back for more.