Taylor Swift Saved my Life
An otherwise untitled "The Eras Tour" post.
Dearest friend,
My children think I’m a dullard for having made Taylor Swift pretty much my whole personality of late, but the truth is, it’s been necessary and I quite likely wouldn’t be here without her.
An accident in Spring of 2022 left me with long term Post Concussion Syndrome*. The life I had previously became a ghost that haunted my days, taunting me about the loss of my life. Anchor-less and drifting on unfamiliar seas sailing the hinterlands of the life I once loved, I found myself lost and alone. Much like a Nolan or Tarantino movie, the beginning is not here though, but a decade previous.
The Beginning
In the same way that Marvel refused to insert itself into my life until the pandemic (a story for another time), Taylor Swift has been figuratively lurking over the years, just waiting until I needed her most.
The Hunger Games. Sing. Little but loud voices bringing songs home from singing assemblies. Shaking it off at school discos. Reputation tour fireworks heard from the back steps of the house. Bigger voices singing “Love Story” in the high school choir. Films with her in that have been part of family movie nights even.
And probably other less well remembered times that she has sauntered into my life, not sticking around, because it just wasn’t time.
Then came a monumental life change. And then came The Eras Tour.
The Eras Tour
I was in the midst of one of the worst times of my life. Everything changed with some idle Instagram scrolling. I came across a video of a friend and her daughters in the process of getting Eras tickets. The anticipation of putting everything in right (because you dare not anger the Ticketmaster Gods), the waiting and then the screaming and crying when it was confirmed they had tickets. That moment changed my life forever and I am forever grateful to them for sharing it.
In a dark tunnel, a light was switched on.
She can make the whole place shimmer
A couple of weeks later, kids off on Scout camp, we took a road trip. Queuing some music up for the drive I decided to check out some of the music our daughter had been listening to and, given how happy my friend had been to get tickets, I added Swift to the playlist to see what the fuss was about. Anything that could make them that happy was worth investigating. I needed some of that in my life.
“Don’t put me in the basement, when I want the penthouse of your heart….I miss you but I miss sparkling” - something about that song hit hard and made me take notice. I swiftly (pun intended) fell down a rabbit hole.
Let’s be Swifties!
Like dominoes cascading in a line (count the song references, I’m keeping them coming) things started to escalate. A short while after that first Bejewelled listen, The Eras Tour Movie was announced. I queued for tickets online (oh I can see the irony of that now, so many hours spent online trying for tickets for shows…) and managed to book us in for opening night, a Friday 13th no less. Not wanting to show up knowing little to no songs or lyrics, I started listening to more and more of Swift’s back catalogue - “let’s be Swifties” my daughter said. I laughed and said that’s a very serious fandom to become part of and didn’t think it was likely.
Challenge accepted
I went into that cinema somewhat defeated and devoid of hope. I left as something else. One thing I had learnt about my situation is that no one was going to fix it for me. No magic medication, very little help from doctors (and what did come was too late), time wasn’t really making much of a difference and children’s memory games had helped bring things back a little but not much, time to step it up.
I began learning lyrics as brain rehab.
I became determined to learn as much as possible of that three and a quarter hour show with the hope of seeing it live and that being a punctuation mark on this whole sorry mess. That was slightly too much to hope for, even for the magic that T.S makes, but it did give me something to work towards.
To live for the hope of it all
One major thing that became apparent is that to have hope again became fuel for my days. Many symptoms still persisted (and still do), but I had hope and a goal. To me it was everything. I don’t think my family will perhaps ever quite understand the single mindedness that drove me and the borderline obsession that ensued. Primarily throughout all of the head injury debacle I had been quite alone in it and I still was, but it was different somehow. Instead of a dark tunnel, it was a glittering one. I began watching livestreams of the shows and sharing that experience with thousands of other like minded souls began to fix a part of me. My mind still broken but my heart getting a little more full every day and my memory getting a little bit better with every song I learnt (the learning didn’t come easy, for context it was infinitely the same track list on repeat).
You and me, that’s my whole world…
I entered countless competitions, was nearly scammed many times and spent a brain boggling (literally because all of this with an aversion to screens was a nightmare) number of hours hitting refresh on Twickets. At the point of failure on one particular day I broke down in tears and told a bewildered husband I had to go because that would be the end of this awful time I had been having. That was a massive reduction in everything I was feeling, but the simplest terms I could convey. Trying to get three tickets for us all to go (Boy excluded, he remains very anti-Swift throughout the whole thing) was seemingly impossible.
I bought an outfit all the same, determined to make it happen. A shimmering sequin thing that was completely uncharacteristic of my usual style. It seems Swift has that effect, I see lots of talk of reclaimed girlhood and stepping out of comfort zones and people finding glittering versions of themselves. How magic a thing, what a gift.
All the stars aligned
A few weeks before the tour was due to hit our shores, an Eras Tour miracle happened. The same friend this all started with was able to put me in touch with a spare ticket.
I was going to The Eras Tour.
I was an emotional wreck those few weeks. I booked the campsite, finessed my outfit, painted my nails in Eras colours and made the friendship bracelets. All the while feeling so emotional I would randomly burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it was happening.
Welcome to The Eras Tour!
After a fraught trip to Edinburgh that saw us less than ideally arriving at our campsite at around midnight and somewhat ideally spending the day of the show at the zoo; I got changed in the toilets, put my make up on in the car and walked with my husband and daughter down to Murrayfield where they saw me off at the gates. Something about it felt ritualistic and like I was about to undergo a transformation. They graciously stayed outside to Tay-gate (a Swiftie take on tail-gating) and I headed in to find my seat (after a few failed attempts at figuring out which block I was even in - for the record, I don’t recommend a new place and thousands of people when you struggle to figure things out!).
I got talking with some ladies in the queue for the toilets, I told them how I came to be there and they hugged me and said I deserved the 22 hat (a nightly tradition of Taylor bestowing her hat upon some lucky soul). I managed to internalise the tears that brought on, I couldn’t cry in the queue for the toilets before it had even started! Done queuing I just made it back to my seat in time for “Applause” - the song that started a hundred Eras shows (literally).
Soon Taylor appeared from under a swathe of Lover coloured fabrics and I couldn’t believe any of it. That she was there, that I was there, that I’d made it. From days that were so dark for me that I barely got out of bed and couldn’t see the point in anything, to this technicoloured glittering wonderland filled with so many kind people and so much hope. I still can’t believe it happened and if the photos weren’t on my phone would think I had dreamt it.
It was bittersweet that I went to the show (essentially) on my own**. One of the reasons I wanted and needed so desperately to go with my family was to celebrate the progress I had made with my recovery and a related myriad of feelings and thoughts that I still can’t quite explain. On the flip side, that journey had been largely mine and it felt quite fitting to be continuing it that way.
She will never know that her music and the tour gave the gift of hope and purpose to me (and probably countless others), and will not have heard me, but as Swift took her final bow of the night I said a quiet “thank you”. I will be grateful, forevermore.
My health is in tatters, every day is still a battle, but the demons began to - if not depart, then quieten themselves in a dusty attic room in my mind. The beloved ghosts of my passed life, sit with their ouija boards and notebooks conjuring the magic of the future. I don’t know what next but there is hope where there was none and sparks of determination fly freely. In time maybe I will tame the sleepless midnights into a sleepy submission, or else adapt them to become my own. I keep a notebook by the bed now as that magic time when the rest of the house is asleep seems to be when I get my best ideas for writing, something that grew legs in earnest after being smitten with the story telling in the folklore album.
In a Swift summation -
“I fell from the pedestal, right down the rabbit hole. Long story short, it was a bad time. Pushed from the precipice, climbed right back up the cliff. Long story short, I survived.” (From “Long Story Short” on the Evermore album)
With love and hope,
V.V
p.s have you had any similar saving graces bestowed upon you by the universe, right when you needed them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments if you feel comfortable sharing.
* That can mean many things as it’s one of those beautiful sticking plasters that doctors use to patch up a myriad of problems, to describe anything and everything that can stick around after a brain injury. For me that meant issues with speech, writing, vision, sleeping, touch (not realising your hands are in boiling hot water until you see the red tide marks on them when you’re washing up for example), memory and a massive, and I mean *monumental* mental health de-railment (psychotic episode, suicidal thoughts, really a truckload of mental changes that I was hit with and not warned about by any of the medical professionals I had seen).
I will write a separate post on all of this in greater detail because part of my biggest problem was that I was alone and fumbling in the dark searching for answers on what was happening to me and how I might fix it, and I did unearth quite a bit but will have to go back through emails and notes to myself, because, well, memory issues. It IS important though, if I can help just one other person by sharing my findings and feelings it will be worth it.
** My friend’s daughter was there with her friend and friend’s mother. I wasn’t completely alone to that end but also didn’t want to intrude on their experience.