A Story About A Taylor Swift Song

To clarify, yes I am embarrassed about writing a story about a Taylor Swift song. But a story is a story. It’s here. I may as well tell it.

I liked a guy. He liked me but there were… rules. And we never talked about the rules. They were just there and we were both supposed to see them and know what they were.

It was very dumb.

I feel very dumb about all of this.

But it happened this way, whether I tell you or not, and now there’s a part I want to share.

The Taylor Swift song is Red and there’s a line she says that I turned over in my mind as I began to like him more, as I felt myself push against these boundaries we wouldn’t talk about.

Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street

It was a good description. Everyone can imagine what that feels like.

The sense of being held back, their foot hovering over the pedal. There’s an idea about the kind of thrill you could experience if it weren’t for this thing boxing you in.

As time went on I could trace the shape of something good that we could be together. I started to feel like an animal who has slowly realized they are in a cage.

It was months of thinking of this line, casually, months of it rotating around in my subconscious.

The thing I kept focusing on, really, was me, because I am always thinking about myself. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t make him understand the promise here? Why am I always imagining Maseratis when it’s probably not that deep?

It’s funny how much time passed like this, of me hearing the song, of me thinking about the line.

It’s funny because it was always the same thing I thought, no matter which question I was asking. All roads led to Rome and Rome was “What is wrong with me?”

So, it was weird to see it in another way.

Weird to turn the line over again one sunny afternoon a few months later and see a shift in my thinking.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.

The important thing in all of this is that I was the Maserati. In every iteration of my questioning, and the ways I blamed myself for things not being better this still never wavered. I was the Maserati. I was the capable one. I was the one who could have made us this thing that was remarkable once it became unencumbered.

That’s something, isn’t it?

It’s enough to see the ways I was good. For now. For now it’s enough to know it wasn’t all me.