Now playing: Taylor Swift

Needless to say, if I was super star Taylor Swift at this point in my life I’d probably have another hit single in the works, or maybe an entire album. There was a number of changes in my life in the past few months I did not at all expect, people who vowed to always be there, simply woke up one day and decided to walk away. And others who I haven’t talked to in so many years have come crashing back into my life without warning. With not only myself, but a number of my girl friends experiencing a lot of trying times (to say the least)  in the same department, I couldn't help but think... 

How peculiar it is that something we consider such a defining moment in our lives, something as special and momentous as falling in love, is an event that happens nearly everyday to everyone. Engrossed in our over eagerness to play out our own personal music videos, it’s so easy to drown in our dramatics. We forget that nearly half of the world is falling in love, breaking up, getting married, having kids, dying, crying, living in the exact same moments as we do.  

Fortunately or unfortunately, Life and Love make no exceptions. A normal girl from a small town or an internationally famous country pop star who’s made millions chronicling her experiences both get hit. Sometimes I am actually tempted to grab a pen and paper and jot down the musings of whats-left-of-my-heart in hopes to be able to sing them to the millions of teenage girls who will swear on One Direction that they have felt the exact. same. way. Of course this pop star fantasy is nowhere near true, I am not a gorgeous 5’10 blonde with crazy guitar skills and even crazier relationship statuses. ( Okay, maybe I can contend the relationship status part. ) But alas, I am not Taylor Swift and so I must live vicariously through her from album to album.  So now I will  leave you darlings with her prologue message from her latest album, “Red” :

“There’s an old poem by Neruda that I’ve always been captivated by, and one of the lines in it has stuck with me ever since the first time I read it. It says “love is so short, forgetting is so long.” It’s a line I’ve related to in my saddest moments, when I needed to know someone else had felt that exact same way. and when we’re trying to move on, the moments we always go back to aren’t the mundane ones. They are the moments you saw sparks that weren’t really there, felt stars aligning without having any proof, saw your future before it happened, and then saw it slip away without any warning. These are moments of newfound hope, extreme joy, intense passion, wishful thinking, and in some cases, the unthinkable letdown. And in my mind, every one of these memories looks the same to me. I see all of these moments in bright, burning red. 

My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love. The red relationships. The ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. Because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in headfirst without looking. And there’s something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that’s never coming. And there’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if i ever find it. But this album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of. Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. But most of all, this record is about love that was red.”

Leave it to T.Swift to sum it all up darlings,

Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right.