This week, Taylor Swift did a thing, and I know that because I have a lot of people in my life who love and adore Taylor Swift.
I’m still mostly in a self-imposed social media time-out, and I’m a person who appreciates Taylor Swift and her work, but if it were not for several friends telling me about the significance of painting your nails white and sending me updates, I would not know that her new album reportedly shares a lot about her relationship and painful split from a long-time boyfriend.
And so, I’ve spent the week in an interesting emotional place …
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, or a moon phase thing, or like how when you are shopping for cars, you pay more attention to car ads, but a lot of people I know have been dealing with aftershocks from something this week, and I’ve noted that, because I’ve been doing the same.
And then I learned that Taylor Swift chose to spend hours and hours thinking about a relationship that apparently ended horribly - so much time on writing and recording and marketing and nail painting …
I considered how, at some point, this same relationship must have been good, right?
You don’t spend 6 years with a jerk if they reveal themself to be a jerk right away …
(Unless this was a Taylor Swift strategy, because again, I am only hearing reports through friends who are fans, but it sure sounds like she is a strategic genius.)
But back to the Fall-Out Parade this week …
A few friends shared with me that they were dealing with a dip in their processing of something rotten. Like maybe things felt OK for a while with whatever thing went wrong in their life, and then BAM - out of nowhere, it all comes up again and they are reminded that no split or break-up or change or big decision is ever just one thing or one moment.
Often it is protracted and messy and ugly, and it’s like grief.
A lot of people think that grief should go denial ➡️ anger, and then anger ➡️ bargaining, and then keep following a straight path to depression and finally acceptance.
But really, it’s more like you are fine on Tuesday.
Really. You’re fine.
And then Wednesday afternoon just as things finally feel a little lighter, another shitty thing happens and brings it all back, and suddenly you are neck-deep in anger, or up to your eyeballs in bargaining.
The depression - that might last for ages. Or maybe it pops up every now and again, and mires you entirely; a gray blanket thrown over you like a net trap.
Like in the case of heartbreak.
I had my heart broken last year, and for a while, I couldn’t even come to terms with that - that it was a heartbreak. That it was a love lost.
It wasn’t a romantic love, and now I realize it probably wasn’t even a true friendship, and yet, like Taylor Swift, you don’t keep choosing a person for 6 years or 8 years or 10 years because they start out as a feeling of hot bile in your throat.
For at least some amount of time, no matter how bad things get, no matter how many red flags pop up, you still see the person you care about, and you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
You want to think they are having a bad day, or bad week or bad month or bad quarter, and then one day you wake up thinking if you can just say the right thing the right way, that they will appear again, like magic.
But then by the end of that day, you realize that the person you knew is gone. They have stopped existing, because now, your memory will always and forever hold the horrible things they said and did - the selfishness. The greed. The manipulation. The lies. The THREATS.
And so they may still be walking and talking and existing, and yet they are lost to you.
And this is only harder when you have to choose to leave.
When you have to finally walk away in order to be OK.
When you have to be the one to say the words.
But at least when you say them, you can start to breathe and start to grieve, right?
It’s just that the grieving won’t be linear, and the hurts will rise up when you feel most tender, and there you are, on the bedroom floor, gasping for breath.
There you are on the phone with the accountant, trying to make sense of someone else’s actions. Trying to explain that you had faith and trust, that had been built over time. Trying to explain that you were giving the benefit of the doubt … and you really, really don’t know why they did the things they did. It must have been an error, you explain.
It takes an outside party to point out to you that it was all a process - that no one goes in the span of a few days or a week from good to bad, or kind to cruel, but that you were had. You were blinded by love and respect and loyalty.
Those are supposed to be good traits. Noble traits.
So then Taylor Swift, who continues to fight and overcome and grow, and sure seems to choose what’s good and generous, releases an album that includes songs and maybe even a title referencing something really rotten (and the many cumulative rotten somethings) that she went through, and I can’t help but wonder - is she on to something?
She certainly has a right to her stories.
I do too. We all do.
But instead of sharing those stories, I’ve tried, for months and months now, to clean up a mess of someone else’s making - to recover from a financial crisis that started long before I knew enough to make any other choice than to stay loyal and try to believe the best …
I see now that I made a huge mistake and placed my trust in the wrong people - I was making crucial decisions while blind-folded. When I learned more, I tried to wait for people who said they loved me to do what was right.
When that didn’t happen, I still tried to act from a place of love; I tried to protect adults from themselves.
Finally, I had to do what Mary Oliver says in her poem “The Journey,” I had to save the only life I could save.
But I need a new poem now. I need Mary Oliver to please tell me what to do when there are medical bills, and college tuition and you can’t afford to fix your car and every person you love most has been impacted and they were all counting on you.
And you thought you were getting it right.
Really.
You stayed too long in the wrong place because you thought even when things started to go horribly, terribly wrong, you had to stick it out for your family - your children.
And you thought love and loyalty and respect mattered and that things could still turn around.
There was still hope.*
And then somehow, it got worse.
A few months ago, I wrote about a few passages from a book that saved me. They kept me sane during the depression and bargaining and denial and back again. They were from a novel, which was unexpected, but we have to take messages from the universe in whatever format they come in, I suppose.
And so this message came to me through a Louise Penny book called A Great Reckoning. There are two passages in the book that I wrote out by hand and keep by my desk as I write and work and try to get it right all over again, starting from zero.
First -
“The world turned upside down. It was at once more beautiful and frightening than you’d been led to believe. And suddenly, you didn’t know what to do. Who to trust. Where to turn.
It’s terrifying.
Being lost is so much worse than being on the wrong road. That’s why people stay on it so long. We’re too far gone, or so we think. We’re tired and confused and we’re scared. And we think there is no way back.”
Then, a few pages later -
“There is always a road back, if we have the courage to look for it and take it. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know. I need help. These are the signposts. The cardinal directions.”
For a long time, holding these words close was enough to help me forgive myself for my blind faith.
But recently, I read those final pages of A Great Reckoning again, and realized there was another part that I needed to write down and keep nearby.
It reads -
“Things are strongest when they are broken. We are all of us marred and scarred and imperfect. We make mistakes. We do things we deeply regret. We are tempted and sometimes we give in to that temptation. Not because we are bad or weak, but because we are human. We are a crowd of faults.”
And so, recently. I started writing again here, as I try to both heal and begin again.
I thought that had to look a certain way - like taking “the highroad” and doing my best to let go.
I promised to Show Up. Tell the Truth. And Not Run Away.
But right now, I’m finally realizing, that it’s still half-truths and leaving out the hardest parts.
I want so much to get things right.
(And Karma is a cat - people keep telling me that.)
So what if I’ve gotten it wrong?
What if not sharing fully about what my life has really, truly looked like for the past year is holding me in place?
What if I am stuffing down emotions that need to be expressed, and truths that need to be said aloud?
What if in an effort to “do the right thing” I am just hurting myself over and over again?
And what if telling you, yeah - I got fucked over and it’s been terrifying and awful - is what you need to hear? What if it will help you know you aren’t the only one?
What if that’s why people love Taylor Swift - because at least she tells the whole ugly truth?
What if Taylor is getting it right?
You may notice that I borrowed a strategy from Taylor Swift and that there are a few musical Easter eggs in this post.
But just in case:
*P.S. Maybe I am naive, but I’m still holding on to hope.
It’s hope that keeps me going when I want to crumple to the floor and ask how I got here.
It was hope that made me buy flowers the day after I walked away.
In the past year or so, I have seen a few people in my life change a lot, and so I believe that goodness is always present and that at any point, people can choose to make better choices and make an effort to fix the damage they have caused.
I also believe in myself in a whole new way. A way that makes me brave. A way that makes me balk at attempts to intimidate me.
A way that reminds me that I deserved so much better. And I still do.
I feel this deeply myself. My friend Deidre Braley of The Second Cup Show recently hosted these poetry jam & slam nights to write poetry and share it on the spot (terrifying! exhilarating!). I wrote this poem about my own difficult relationship. I just wanted to share it, not because it offers hope (sorry!), but to say, I get it.
Death Among the Living
by Sarah Steele
It would have been easier if someone had died—
for then I could have mourned loss
with understanding.
Instead, I endure grief that confounds—
every time our eyes meet and flinch away,
every time arms remain frozen at sides,
every time I hear your news from someone else.
Instead, here we are, both living, no funeral
to mark the death that has occurred.
There's a quote from Anne Lamott, and I can't remember which book it's from, but your post made me think of it: "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."
If "taking the high road" and "letting it go" is working for you, cool, but if it's not, it's okay to let it all out. You're not obligated to cover for someone who behaved badly toward you.