This Week's Drama: Karma is the Guy on the Chiefs

"We See in Others What We Fear in Ourselves" - a headline of an article i did not read

She’s gay. She had a long storied love affair with her best friend. She didn’t write an entire album about a relationship that only lasted three months, in fact that album was about Dianna Agron. And that whole Tom Hiddleston thing was just part of an elaborate cover up that allowed her to sing about the pain of losing her best friend who was also the love of her life while at the same time hinting at her similarities to queer icon Dusty Springfield, which will all make sense when she comes out as bisexual after her eras tour and then we’ll all be like “OH that’s why she left her estate to a cat sanctuary in the anti-hero video” and………

I became a Gaylor convert in 2018.

I spent an entire friday evening (i’m cool) reading tumblr threads explaining how Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss’s friendship ended because they weren’t just friends, they were in LOVE as described by the song You Are In Love - which Taylor claimed was about Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff but come on - “dancing in a snow globe, 'round and 'round” has to be about THIS moment:

…Right? And then there’s songs like Dress where Taylor sings about “secret moments in a crowded room”, proclaims “I don’t want you like a best friend” and mentions a golden tattoo because she knows we all know that she and Karlie wore golden flash tats to Drake’s birthday party!

Why did I get so invested in this?! Why was I dissecting old instagram photos of Taylor and Karlie on a road trip in Big Sur!? Why do I so badly want to believe that Taylor has been faking her heterosexual relationships? Maybe because she wanted me to and that’s how she sells albums…

…But also maybe because all of her public relationships have been sooooo damn annoying.

That’s where conspiracy theories work best! As an alternative answer to a reality we can’t quite stomach. It’s more palatable for me to believe that Taylor Swift fell in love with her super model best friend but society wouldn’t allow them to express their feelings than it is for me to accept that she fell for the Loki guy and met his mom after only a month of dating and then made him wear an “I Heart TS” shirt to her 4th of July party.

For me, Gaylor had nothing to do with Taylor’s sexual orientation. It was a way for me to believe that my favorite singer/songwriter of ALL TIME….

…was not…

oh……….

………….dear God………..

…THIS girl. The girl who takes time out of her bajillion-dollar touring enterprise to go to her boyfriend’s football games and chest bump his jock friends. The girl who would change her brilliantly written song lyrics for a guy she just met a couple months ago and sing to him on an international stage even though she was JUST mouthing “I love you” on that same stage to the LAST guy she had a fling with! She can’t be this girl! I can’t STAND this girl! Goddamnit…

…I AM this girl.

As someone who’s been described as “a hopeless romantic”, “boy crazy”, “loves blindly”… which are all generous alternatives to “mentally ill with attachment wounds”, I find Taylor’s behavior a little TOO relatable.

I actually remember Taylor’s first hit single coming out when I was a freshman in high school. I listened to Our Song and was like “MUST BE NICE TO HAVE A SONG WITH SOMEONE!” I could only dream of such things! The best I could get was grinded with at a dance for less than five minutes. Literally. I was like “finally got a taker” but by the time I turned around, he was gone.

But ever since my nose job-induced late bloom, I’ve consistently entangled myself in whirlwind romances and mutual love bombings. I’ve forced my friends and family to meet man after man that I’ve only been dating a few months, promising them this time it was different, this guy was THE one. Just like J*hn M*yer, J*ke Gyllenh*al, H*rry St*les, C*lvin Harr*s, T*m H*ddleston, J*e Al*ynn, M*tty H*aly and now Travis Kelce probably have all felt like THE one to Taylor, and maybe Karlie did too!

I’ve changed my life around for relative strangers, moved states, moved apartments, gone on and off birth control, learned to play Dungeons and Dragons for fuck’s sake, all somehow forgetting the way these whirlwinds tend to end. With me. Alone. Channeling my pain into hopeless thirst traps and crying myself to sleep in front of the Pamela Anderson documentary.

I think this is something everyone struggles with, though it manifests in so many different ways — the need for love and the wounds that make love difficult to receive and express, especially in moderation. That could be why Taylor’s blatant love of love, the way she enjoys the highs and creates art out of the lows, makes some of us uncomfortable. No one can say Taylor isn’t vulnerable, and in order to celebrate and enjoy the vulnerability of others, rather than judge or shy away from it, we have to be comfortable getting vulnerable with ourselves.

At times, I’ve felt like applying to be a contestant on Love is Blind was an easier alternative to actually dealing with my attachment issues and processing my emotions around love… even though I’ve heard you can’t have your phone or internet in the pods and the producers won’t even let you eat snacks. I have made so many mistakes in my relationships, caused harm and honestly been toxic as hell at times, but in order to move forward I have had to forgive myself and accept that I am just human and could only work with what I knew at the time. I was doing my best to love and be loved. And my exes were too, and so is Taylor! I forgive us all (though no one asked me to lol)! And if Taylor wants to sing “karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me” — so be it!

That’s how I feel right now. Tomorrow I might be angry at my exes again. And the next day I might be sad and eventually I may end up changing song lyrics for someone or deciding all of Taylor’s relationships are PR and I just hope I can keep loving and forgiving myself, and others, through it all (but I’ll never forgive Gyllenh*al).

I guess maybe I’ll know I’ve reached real growth when I can see a video of a celeb couple kissing at a concert and just go on with my day instead of writing an essay making it about myself.

Til then THANKS FOR READING!