I’ve stayed away from any videos regarding the 1989 tour because I want everything to be a surprise, but I’ve heard a lot about her performance of “Clean” and I don’t think I’m ready for the speech. Apparently she discusses depression or something along the lines of those feelings, and she’s hands down the reason I survived, and am still surviving everyday, with my depression. And hearing someone I love so much, someone I look up to and admire address those feelings that I have felt for so long is honestly going to make me crumble as soon as I hear them. I’ve been dealing with depression for almost six years now, and there has been so many times when I wanted to give up. When I wanted to just drop everything and stop living. The only reason I can say I didn’t, is because of Taylor. When things were rough and I felt like I had no one, I always had Taylor. Even though I couldn’t physically call her up or hug her, I knew I had her. She was the one who gave me the strength to finally speak up to my parents and tell them how bad I was struggling. She was the reason I decided to take my own life into my own hands, and stop destroying myself. She’s the reason the scars on my arms are nothing but scars, and another one will never be added to my skin. Telling my parents all these things that were going on inside of my head was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Watching my mom break down in front of me and cry with me when I finally told her everything broke me to pieces. Watching my dad feel like a failure because even though he tried so hard, I still came out like this, hurt me the most. Having to sit down on a cold black couch in an unfamiliar room and tell a woman I had never met every little thing that was going on in my mind was the most terrifying experience I have ever gone through.
I remember a few months into my therapy, when things were still bad and talking just wasn’t working, when my mom brought up asking about pills. I almost got sick, because I was so scared. I had always been the kind of person who didn’t believe in pills. I didn’t believe that a little pill could change my brain so much. I didn’t want to be dependent on a pill for happiness. I asked regardless, because I couldn’t stand going another week crying myself to sleep and wanting to kill myself. I had to go to another doctor, and god was it so scary. I had to sit in a room with my mom, and tell yet again another woman I had never met everything. And by everything, I literally mean everything. She asked me if I had ever thought about killing myself. When I answered yes, she asked me if I had ever planned it out. When I said yes, I had to watch my mothers face fall and tears overwhelm her eyes as the doctor asked me the next question, “How would you do it?” And I had to be honest. I had to tell her everything. I remember when I got home, I curled up in a ball listening to “Never Grow Up” for hours, trying to push the past few hours of my life away. That was one of the worst days I’ve ever had to experience.
I began therapy the summer I was going into my senior year. I spent my entire senior year not only dealing with being a senior in high school, which is stressful in itself, but trying to figure myself out. Trying to calm down my depression, and the anxiety I had that sometimes left me withering on the floor, shaking, every bone in my body completely locking up simply because I was thinking of the work that was due the next week. I had heard somewhere that sometimes music could calm a person down when they were having an anxiety attack, but I had never tried it. But one night, when ten minutes had passed and I felt like it was only going to get worse, I finally turned on Taylor’s music. It was only her slow songs, because I felt the faster ones might trigger me more, but within a minute or so I was able to finally breathe calm and slowly talk myself down. From that day forward and to this day now, if I ever feel one coming on I turn on her music and I can calm myself down before it hits, or before it gets worse.
I’ve been clean for a little over a year now. Everyday is a struggle, some days worse than others, but every day it does seem to get easier. I take pills every night, and I’ve accepted that I’ll have to depend on them for the rest of my life to be happy. But I’m okay with that, because they work. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully happy with myself, but that’s something I’m going to try and work on every day. And with the help of Taylor, who has already helped me so much during this process, I think I might one day be able to achieve that. So thank you Taylor, because without you, I don’t think I would be alive.
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