The Song That Made Me Leave

It wasn't a love song.

Today’s post is a bonus column for paid subscribers. I am offering a $30/annual subscription sale this summer as a way to make paid subscriptions more affordable and to express my gratitude for the readers who are able to support my work while I am shopping the manuscript for my memoir around this summer. So, if you have the means, please consider a $30 annual subscription, and I’ll be sharing bonus content for those readers in the coming months! (If finances are a hardship and you would like to access bonus content, please let me know.)

Today’s column is about waking up to ourselves, breaking points, and yes, Taylor Swift.

Here are a few housekeeping items before I dive in:

• We had an utterly gorgeous guest post on Midstory this week. When I read the first line of Allison Holden’s poem about her marriage, I felt like my heart stopped for a moment. She had the courage and capacity to write with such raw honesty about topics many of us are not able to do for a variety of reasons. Read Imaginary Lives here.

• If this kind of writing about marriage and divorce speaks to you, sign up for an interest list for our fall HerStories workshop “Writing Divorce” here. No commitment, just to stay in the loop!

• After two amazing sessions of Writing our Eras, a prompt based creative writing workshop that focuses on Taylor Swift’s music, we are offering a July session by popular demand! It’s a 3-week long community class that beings July 10th. Swifties and non-Swifties, and writers of ALL levels (even absolute beginners) welcome! Sign up and learn more here.

• My column on Monday was about openly grieving our disappoints. Read These Grapes Are Sour.

• I have two Moms Unhinged Comedy shows coming up, CO locals! One on July 14th in Louisville and one on July 17th in Denver. I would love to see you there! These shows are SO much fun!

  
  The Song That Made Me Leave

It wasn’t what you might think. There were so many breakup songs to choose from, weren’t there?

When you’re a Swiftie music therapist, it’s easy to curate Taylor-heavy playlists that form the soundtrack of each moment in your life. You listen over and over, writing yourself out of old Eras and into new ones.

It could have been, “It’s Time To Go.”

That old familiar body ache,
The snaps from the same little breaks
In your soul
You know when it’s time to go.

Or it could have been “My Tears Ricochet,” one of my favorite songs of all time, the poetry of the lyrics only amplified by watching her march across the stage with her dancers behind her like a funeral procession during the Eras Tour. Certainly I played it daily for months on end, finding myself in the lyrics.

I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet

But it wasn’t.

And I wanted to be outraged by the presumptuous, reductive question. How overly simplistic. How intrusive. How insulting. And yet, if I had to answer it, I could. And so could she.