“Trash takes itself out every single time”

This one's for the underdogs

Taylor Swift with Snake

I tried, dear reader. I wrote and scheduled posts one week and two weeks out, thinking I could get ahead so I could get back to other life-ish things. Yet, despite my best efforts, today, I have learned that I. Cannot. Schedule. Posts. Because. Life. Keeps. Changing. And. I. Can’t. Not. Talk. About. It. 

Take this juicy Sigma album Taylor Swift dropped yesterday, which I haven’t even listened to, but I read the lyrics… of one song. And would you believe it’s got me curled up in the fetal position like fifth grade all over again?

Look, I promise this is not a vapid pop culture hot take. Nor is it really about Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, which I’ll get to soon.

It is about anyone who has ever been bullied by a popular girl and thinks that shit is finally behind them until one tiny little thing sets them off, and they realize they are still fragile, broken little fifth graders who think they will never be loved. 

*looks around, raises hand*

Anyone else?

Okay, if that’s not you, you may go back to toggling between doom-scrolling and re-runs of Below Deck. I will still love you.

Yesterday, T. Swift released a new album, Tortured Poets Department. Then at 2:00 AM ET, she released 15 more songs, which is so metal of her.

One of the fresh tracks, “thanK you, aIMee,” weird capitalization intentional, puts nemesis Kim Kardashian on blast. (Note how all the capitalized letters spell out Kim’s name.) To get you up to speed, a kerfuffle between Taylor Swift and everyone’s favorite anti-Semite, Kanye West, led Kim K. to not-so-discreetly call Tay-Tay a “snake.”

(And now excuse me while I take a forest bath from typing those two K names in succession. My apologies, reader.)

In an interview with Time Magazine, Taylor referred to the experience as “a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.” As a result, T. Swift left the country and didn’t leave her rental house for a year.

Taylor Swift wears a bejeweled snake catsuit during her Eras Tour in homage to her “Reputation” album. After haters flooded her social media with snake emojis post Kim-K/Kanye drama, T. Swift reclaimed the snake on her 2017 album “Reputation” in a way to subvert its power. Image by Getty.

Now, in her new song “thanK you, aIMee,” T. Swift is getting comeuppance for herself and every other girl who was made to feel smaller than a dust mote.

With apologizes to my friend, Aimee, who has nothing to do with this song, the song begins:

When I picture my hometown / There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you/ And a plaque underneath it / That threatens to push me down the stairs at our school

Now I know that there are many possible truths to the T. Swift-Kim K. beef. But this one feels particularly true because I feel it in my body. Because we know that the body keeps the score. And when our bodies are growing like gangbusters because puberty and those pesky feelings get stuck in our bodies at that time, that changes us, like, on the molecular level. Like on the DNA, pass-it-onto-my-kids level.

My ten-year-old heart still trembles at memories of that day on the playground when my best friends refused to talk to me out of nowhere. And how when, years later, some guy told me how my once-bestie had bragged to him about how she had made all my friends turn on me. And how those mean girls became even more popular in middle school, even as they continued to torment and laugh at me in the lunch room when the love letter pretending to be written by my crush was revealed actually to be from them.

But I dreamed that one day, I could say / All that time you were throwin’ punches, I was buildin’ somethin’ / And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel / Screamed “F--- you, Aimee” to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’

And yes, there were times I didn’t want to leave the house, either. And there was a long time I thought I’d never be healed. And no one would love me.

And I often wonder if that’s why I stayed with a man who treated me like shit, because I thought, Well, at least someone loves me.

All that time you were throwin’ punches, it was all for nothin’ / And our town, it looks so small, from way up here / Screamed “Thank you, Aimee” to the night sky, and the stars are stunnin’

And how many times have I closed my eyes, seen the stars inside my eyelids, and thought: There is a lesson here. And somehow, I will come out stronger…

But realistically, when I look at Taylor Swift, I see myself: shoulders rolled in to protect her wounded heart. Posture slightly bent from leaning in, trying to please, well-practiced at making herself smaller.

I see a young sensitive, complex, confident, and insecure woman putting on the damn red lipstick as if to say, Okay, world, you broke me, but you haven’t beaten me. I’m still here, bare legs, red lips and all. LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE.

In my cougar grandma era. I feel like this outfit really screams “revenge.”

And I think about that every time I see the fourth-grade girls roll their eyes behind my daughter’s back or, conversely, when my eighth-grade students roll their eyes at me.

Oh, Taylor, did you know that you would make me cry with this song? This song that is for all the girls and boys who found themselves alone in the dark, with so many daydreams and nightdreams of flying above the kids on the playground they thought they were birds in their past lives? Who imagined themselves being older and famous so that they could finally give the middle finger to the meanies?

But the truth is, those mean girls became successful and happily married. They became good friends.

No, I never talked to them about it.

Yes, I'm still fucked up about it.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t healed yet.

Maybe that’s why Taylor is still ruminating on this shit from 2016.

Maybe she doesn’t want to project that shit onto her kids.

Because art is her healing.

And her healing is other people’s healing.

Just like our healing can heal the world.

As Mistress Taylor wrote the night of the album’s release:

Our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that's left behind is the tortured poetry.

Do you relate? Has poetry healed your wounds? Have you heard the album? Sound off in the comments!

And while you’re at it, support independent writing and give a finger to mean girls by buying a discounted yearly subscription.

Love,

Summer

P.S. Smash the heart button, please, so more peeps can be healed from bullies. Thank you!