So Taylor Swift released You’re Losing Me and it made me take a little trip down memory lane. For my non-Swiftie readers, the song is a precursor to a break up. You know when you know the end is near, and you are grieving the break up even before it has happened. You are trying your best to stay afloat, but your co-pilot has given up already so now you are going to go down crashing. Maybe I am just procrastinating, but we don’t talk enough about falling out of love. Or growing apart with people who once saw you at the best of times and worst of times. People you thought would be in your life forever but now are a stranger whose laugh you could recognise anywhere. It is so weird when you are not on the same page with someone anymore, the very someone who could once finish your sentences.
There is nothing more painful and humiliating than begging someone to love you and finally realising you've gotta let go because no matter how much you try sometimes your best isn't gonna be good enough for someone who doesn't love you anymore and there is absolutely nothing you can do about that. Some things just aren't in your control. Being gaslit into thinking you are the problem when you have done nothing but given them your all. The imagery of lying on a hospital bed, fighting for the last of it, trying to hold on as the heart beats echo through out and the sigh it starts with, there are so many lyrical parallels to Taylor’s past work but even isolated this song is heart breaking and you know it has been on loop all morning because I LOVE SAD SONGS. I think the reason I loved this song at first listen was because of how relatable it is.
You can really try your best to communicate with someone what you want, sometimes they will just not understand what you are asking for. Or maybe they just don’t want to but again there is nothing you can do about that. Communication isn’t the same as comprehension. So whilst you might be speaking at each other you are really not be listening to one another, or maybe you don’t want to anymore. Or maybe you are just incapable of it at this point. If you are like me and hyper-aware of your surroundings, you can likely sense the slightest inflections in people’s behaviour or attitude towards you, at which point it is hard to not question everything. Poor self-esteem and childhood trauma was what resulted in my superpower of hyper-awareness, so before I learnt to love myself when something went wrong I would refuse to address it. I couldn’t for the life of me accept how I might have made a mistake that then led to someone being hurt.
I am on the other side now, because I am aware of the hurt that I caused because of my lack of communication and comprehension, so I can also identify when someone I am trying to work things with is doing the same. Maybe I am just making excuses for them, and they really were just a shit human being, some people simply are. But if we all thought that way there would be no empathy or forgiveness left in the world, and I don’t want to live like that. I want to believe the best in people. I like thinking we are all capable of learning from our mistakes, whether we choose to do that or not is up to us. I don’t judge people based on their mistakes but rather on how they recover from it. We are all bound to fuck up, duh. But not everyone will own up to their mistakes, and that is something I really respect in people. When they are able to take accountability.
That being said when there is a lack of accountability, as much as it hurts, it might be time to go. Think of it as treating a really painful infection, that if left on its own may lead to an amputation. The longer you wait to eradicate it, the higher the stakes and consequently the repercussions that follow will be too. Which is really hard I know, but like also why do would you want someone who doesn’t want to be a part of your life to be in your life? The reason I love You're Losing Me is because whilst it is a break up song and it is not grieving the loss of something great that once was, it is not romanticising it. It isn’t slicing in memories of the good times like some of Taylor’s other songs like All Too Well: We're dancing 'round the kitchen in the refrigerator light. Where the past is very much present in the song as she holds onto her memories, because she wanted to remember the good times, regardless of how the relationship ended. “Oh, I am scared to see the ending Why are we pretending this is nothing?” is from another one of my favourite break up song ever Story of Us where the narrator is feigning confusion to perhaps explain the conflict in hopes of salvaging the relationship at this point in the song, but 13 years later she is speaking her feelings as they are, not mincing her words, “Stop ‘cause you’re losing me.” Which I interpret as developing self-respect, and addressing conflict head on. You could pretend everything is alright and let it eat at you on the inside because you don’t want to have the hard conversation or talk about whether you want to fight for each other or not.
I perceive the narrative in You’re Losing Me is the aftermath of that conversation. I absolutely love the line “the air is thick with loss and indecision I know my pain is such an imposition” because it feels personal. When someone you would move heaven and earth for doesn’t care that you are hurting. Where they don’t even care enough to end your suffering by letting you go, so you have be the one to cut the cord. When someone is way more important to you than you are to them, because they have others they value more than they would ever value you. Which isn’t your fault. But as someone who has also been on the other side of it, it isn’t their fault either. People can’t help how they feel. You can’t manufacture love, respect or affection. It is either there or it isn’t. And sometimes it is there and then it can run its course, which is fucking sad but that is also just life. What are you going to do about it?
You can choose to stay and fight but you can’t win that battle on your own, not unless the other side concedes. Which doesn’t happen, because if you have gone far enough were you have to beg them to love you, then you’re not in love with each other, maybe you were at one point but they don’t love you anymore. And the chances of them loving you again because you asked is slim. I have reached this point in my life where I now meet people halfway, I am not moving heavens or earths for anyone nor do I expect them to do that for me. They aren’t responsible for my happiness, I am. So I don’t hold onto someone who doesn’t want to stick around. You will only be in my life if you want to be in my life, if you don’t that is fine. Not everyone is meant for everyone always. So the person you think you would spend forever with may not be your person at all. Maybe they were at one point but time changes people, so just like you have changed so have they and instead of changing in a way that compliments each other you can very well find each other be at odds instead and that is gonna hurt. And you will grow to resent that person, but eventually once you have let go, your lives will diverge in such different directions they will merely be a footnote in the story of your life, and you will be okay.
But yes basically I really love You’re Losing Me (From the Vault) and I couldn’t get it out of my head so this was a way for me to get this out of my system so I can stop listen to it and finally try to understand how on earth VBA programming works for my exam that is in less than a week’s time. I have now positively outed myself as a obsessive compulsive pathological Taylor Swift fan who will listen and read too much into and dissect all her songs like a literature nerd (which if you knew me at school would know could not be further from the truth) but you know what this is my blog that I run because I want to so I can write about whatever it is that I want to.
I am gonna go study now, bye.
Love yourself,
Nashrah xo
Comments