Why I love Taylor Swift So Much a.k.a. How To Heal a Broken Heart

I will forever remember 2014 as the year where my heart was broken as it was never before. It was the beginning of summer and I was studying for my exams, both crying, sobbing and complaining how I would never trust anyone again. Looking back to it now, I guess I accept that I had to live through that so I could add "true raw heartbreak" to my collection of teenagehood experiences.

It is really painful to feel that devastated, because suddenly it seems like everything you believed was just a mirage and you are again in the uninviting and monotonous desert of life, without any clue or map to know which direction you shall now go.

I guess I've spent most of my childhood and teenage years restraining a lot of things I just felt because I thought they were not important enough to be felt or they were just "stupid things teenagers feel that are not important to anybody else", but as I climb my mountain to adulthood, I conclude that yes, they were important and yes, they reflect what I am now and the things I do and I believe in.

During summer I googled "How to be single" or "How to deal with a broken heart" or "How to believe in true love again" and I also started listening to Taylor Swift, this country-pop singer I dissed until then and whose music I thought it was, again, stupid and unimportant and over-emotional. 

I started listening to we are never ever getting back together and recorded a dumb videoclip of it with one of my best friends. I also listened to I knew you were trouble and All Too Well. The more I listened to Taylor Swift, the more I felt happy and empowered by her music. She had a different song for each strong and painful emotion I was feeling. It made me feel listened and understood and somehow it gave me hope. I loved how she conveyed all those emotions into strong and catchy tunes which one could relate to.

However, somehow I felt sort of embarrassed at first for liking Taylor's music. People kept saying that it was "girls' superficial music" and I thought and concluded that wait, I'm a girl and wait, I'm a teenager and I should just have the right to feel this and cry over this and complain how I would never embrace love again because my heart was broken by a person who lied to me.  

Some people tell me I shouldn't expose myself this much, but if it wasn't for all those girls who exposed themselves and gave their own testimonies on heartbreak or just lifebreak in general, I would probably be here still crying and thinking what could I possibly had done wrong.

Nowadays I'm so addicted to Taylor's music, I bought the new album, 1989, on its first week of sales and played it over and over again and cried while listening to it. So what I want to say is, it gets better. In a slowly and rather bittersweet way, it gets better. You learn to find the beauty in pain and to use sadness as an experience to help others who may feel the same.

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1989

1. Welcome to New York

This is the open track. I like how it actually welcomes you into the album and invites you to experience the whole new sound of it.

"It’s a new soundtrack I could dance to this beat...
Forevermore" 

I really like this line because for me it describes what the album - and my life now - feels like... A new soundtrack for a new stage.

" When we first dropped our bags
On apartment floors
Took our broken hearts
Put them in a drawer" 

Again reinforcing the idea that we are starting new.

2. Blank Space

"Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space baby
And I'll write your name"

She somehow found a way of empowering herself actually starting from one of her alleged weaknesses which is amazing and inspiring, at least for me as a girl and human being in general.

3. Style

"I should just tell you to leave cause I
Know exactly where it leads but I
Watch us go round and round each time"

I like the honesty in these lyrics and I definitely can relate because sometimes it is hard to have the courage to say "no" and just move on to other things, better things.

4. Out of the Woods

"Remember when we couldn't take the heat
I walked out, I said, I'm setting you free"

5. All You Had to Do Was Stay

"I've been picking up the pieces of the mess you made"

I listened to this song a lot while being lost in the streets of Budapest, thinking how I had tried so hard to move on this summer and on the number of things I actually managed to do and accomplished in spite of being so sad and skeptical about people.

6. Shake It Off

"But I keep cruising
Can't stop, won't stop moving
It's like I got this music
In my mind
Saying, "It's gonna be alright.""

AND THE PLAYERS GONNA PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY
AND THE HATERS GONNA HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

I just wish all pop music sent such a strong message as this one sends.
This song is GOOD and it makes you feel GOOD THINGS :)

7. I Wish You Would

"You always knew how to push my buttons"

But you don't anymore.

8. Bad Blood

"Band-aids don't fix bullet holes"

I have no other thing to say rather than "this is so true".

9. Wildest Dreams

"Some day when you leave me
I bet these memories follow you around"

10. How You Get The Girl

"Tell her how you must've lost your mind
When you left her all alone
And never told her why
And that's how it works
That's how you lost the girl"

This song is basically a guide on: "how to get the girl back".

11.  This Love

"Your kiss, my cheek, I watched you leave
Your smile, my ghost, I fell to my knees
When you're young you just run
But you come back to what you need"

The lyrics speak for themselves, I will just cry once more while listening to this.

12. I Know Places

"And you know for me it's always you
(...) And I know for you it's always me"

13. Clean

"The drought was the very worst
When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst
(...)
Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it
10 months older, I won't give in
Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it

Rain came pouring down when I was drowning
That's when I could finally breathe
And by morning gone was any trace of you,
I think I am finally clean"

This track is both sad and happy but it describes SO WELL how I feel a lot of the time.
It looks like a smart beautiful poem converted into a song.

And it is also the perfect ending for the album.
With Taylor - and me - being clean.

Bonus Tracks

The Deluxe Version of the album - which I obviously bought - comes with these three bonus tracks which are also so great.

13. Wonderland

"You searched the world for something else to make you feel like what we had
And in the end in wonderland we both went mad"

14. You Are In Love

"You understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars
And why I've spent my whole life trying to put it into words
Cause you can hear in the silence
You can feel it on the way home
You can see it with the lights out
You're in love, true love
You're in love"

This is what true love seems to me. 
Something magic you can't explain but you can feel with all your senses.

15. New Romantics

"We play dumb
But we know exactly what we're doing
We need love, but all we want is danger
We team up and switch sides like a record changer
(...)
Heart break is the national anthem
We sing it proudly
(...)
Baby we're the new romantics
The best people in life are free"

And I am free :)