my obsession with taylor swift explained

i don't think i've ever attempted to explain fully my juvenile obsession/borderline creepy/love for taylor swift. not to anyone. in fact, i'm pretty sure the only reason i've avoided it is because i've heard the rebuttal a thousand times before even though i am probably more acutely aware of what is wrong with worshipping her than anyone else. yes, i know that she only writes about love and relationships, yes i know she idealizes love similarly to a 13 year old girl, and yes i know that the way she scorns those who have done her wrong is slightly self indulgent and it's very likely that they aren't the only problem.

trust me i know. 

the first time i listened to a song by taylor swift, i rolled my eyes. a little hard to believe now, but truly, when i heard "our song" for the first time i thought kill me now, another blonde bopper with an auto toned voice singing about boys. i hated it. hated every moment of it so much that i vowed i would rather pull a van vogh and cut off my ears before i heard another note from miss swift.

fast forward just a few months. i don't know what it was about the moment or what it was exactly about the song, but i heard "should've said no" on one of my therapeutical country drives after my nannying job i took the summer i was 16. experiencing the first whiff of being scorned myself, there was something about every single line that just made me say YES, this is it. YES, this is what i'm thinking better than i can put into my own words. perfectly. and maybe it was her somewhat boring unimpressive voice that made her lyrics all the more powerful. she wasn't a carrie underwood hitting unforeseen notes, she was just a regular joe singing about this and that. and what shone through her mediocre voice was the pure raw feeling behind them. it could have been me or you or my best friend singing her music and it hit me that she was just like us. she is us. the regulars. and all before i found out that she wrote her own songs, manifested her dream all by herself, used names in her songs, and was the most humble person in the music industry.

i closely followed her after that and learned her entire story. without reciting it myself, i was struck by her pure dedication; choosing her dream at 12 years old and spending every waking second dreaming about it without spending a hesitating which was exactly what i wasn't doing. i second guess myself and the dreams nearest and dearest to my heart constantly and i realized that when i listened to her music. i didn't believe in myself the way she did to get herself as far as she did. when i found out that taylor swift, after her fearless album was released, was performing just eighty miles from me, i cried. i can't explain it but i just knew that something about this was meant to be. i think looking back, when i was 16, i was looking for a reason i should believe in my dreams and as corny as it is, i made taylor swift, the girl literally singing her stories to the world and making herself heard, that reason. 

the night before her concert, i went to walmart. i had the idea of making a sign but i had no idea if it was something that was going to actually do anything. my friend taylor urged me to do it and i went to walmart last minute to buy 8 poster boards in the brightest color i could. my sister painted the words and i finished my homework so i could miss the two days of school i'd need to. the next day, because the sign wasn't done, i missed two periods so i could finish painting it. my mom lectured me and the mood in the car the entire way to the concert was anything but a happy one. however, and it's a feeling that wasn't present when i went to seattle last year to see her, i had these freaky unexplainable chills. i didn't know how or what, but i knew something big and life changing was about to happen.

her concert was the best two hours of my life. singing out the words to her stories with her in front of us was a high unlike anything i've experienced even today. the fact that she had this dream, wrote about things so personal and dear to her heart, and made them real to a crowd of 10,000 people was unbelievable to me when it felt like she was just like me. 

it was during her acoustic set that taylor switched ends of the arena and performed on the floor right next to us. i freaked out. we jumped up and down and screamed louder than anyone around us and pissed a lot of people off because with our signs raised above our heads, we cut off a lot of people's view. during tim mcgraw, i saw her smile in our direction but i had no idea if it was actually because of our sign (the only in the concert). however, less than five minutes later, i felt someone tapping my hand from below me and looked down to see a lady with a paper bag.

"do you want to meet taylor swift?" i started crying right then and there.

meeting her solidified any doubt i had i have ever had about myself, which i know will sound stupid so anyone who reads this but i honestly don't care what anyone exactly thinks, either. i can't explain it, i really can't, but forming this goal of meeting her 8 months before i found out she was coming, and achieving that goal proved to me that yes dreams come true. i did that. being able to tell her and hear her say back that i loved her (among a slew of embarrassing things) and hug her has ever since quieted any self doubt. i met taylor swift because i made the biggest sign i could. i did that. taylor swift is just like anyone of us and with hard work, i can make anything i want happen happen for myself, too. we all can. yes, i love that she sings her heart out much like the way i write my heart out on my blog and in my journals. i love the entire taylor swift package, bangs and curly hair included, but i love the "anything is possible" and "just like anyone else" persona even more. i love her because she is so normal. standing before her in one of her shows, you just know that this is what she was born to do.

i'll always be a fan. always. no matter what. of the girl, the writer, and the stories she tells.

video of taylor swift telling us she loves us here.