Dear Taylor - I just want you to know...
My name is Juliette. I am attending your Brisbane show in December with my sister and one of my friends (I’m super excited). We’re dressing up and everything (I’m 20, and I don’t even care).
This year has been a bit of an interesting year (to put it lightly). This December I am graduating from university (yay!), and for forever your songs have pushed me through every assignment and study session I have ever had. So thank you
This August to October, things took a turn for the worst. My Nanna was not only a grandmother to me, but my best friend. She had a lot of things wrong with her, and in October she passed away peacefully with her family by her side. She was still quite young by today’s standards. Life can be so unfair sometimes.
During this same time my boyfriend and I started having serious problems. My boyfriend and I had been together for 2 years. Most of that time, he spent promising that, when we were financially ready, he’d marry me. I naively assumed her wasn’t speaking words he didn’t really mean. I was wrong. It turns out all he ever did was say stuff he didn’t mean.
He told me he was losing his job and he’d probably have to move all the way across the country to get another one. I offered to move with him. That’s what love does, right? He told me not to worry about that, but he wasn’t interested in an interstate relationship. He just needed to find another job here. He just couldn’t be bothered though (that’s kind of a running theme in his life).
He became more distant, and as my Nanna got sicker he got colder. I’d tell him I felt so alone, and he told me he was tired and then he’d go to sleep. End of discussion. He was a man with a full-time job. I was just a student with nothing better to do than stay up all night uttering things I didn’t mean. Except I meant what I said. He never did.
On 1 October, we got a phone call from the doctors. My Nanna had been unconscious and she was, more than likely, not going to last long. My boyfriend and I had had a fight and we hadn’t spoken in a week, but I needed him. I didn’t care how much he’d hurt me. I just needed someone I could count on. I thought it would have been him.
I called him and he told me to be quick. He had friends over for a party. He didn’t have time to talk. I told him everything and he told me that he had just had a beer and he didn’t feel like talking. Then he hung up. I begged him to stay, but he just hung up.
The next morning we found out that Nanna was definitely going to die. I sent him a text and asked him to call me. He did
I spent 30 minutes on the phone crying about how lonely I was and he said nothing. After I finished talking all he said was “We should break up.” Then he spent the next 1.5 hours telling me ‘not to be aggressive’ and that I should just focus on the good times. Then he fed me every single line in the book ‘We can still be friends. It’s not you, it’s me. We might still get back together.’ I told him to go and fuck himself.
The beautiful part is that he is going to your concert with his friend at the end of the year. Before we hung up I told him to enjoy your concert knowing that the songs that you wrote were about douchebags like him.
I don’t blame him for doing it over the phone (he lived 3.5 hours away from me). I do blame him for putting me through 6 weeks of “I love you. I don’t know if I love you. I love you” on repeat. I blame him for promising me those things and never meaning any of it. Apparently I just ‘misunderstood.’
He told me I was just too much effort. I don’t really get that. I never asked for anything from him except love. I never asked for any gifts or any grand romantic anythings. Just pure love and acceptance. He couldn’t even handle that.
All of those promises he made were things I held onto, and now I’m finding it so hard to even comprehend letting myself believe those promises from someone else. I don’t want to be made a fool of again.
So, the songs You Are In Love and Begin Again... They’re giving me the hope that I’m lacking right now. I don’t know if love lasts forever (my grandparents and parents lives seem to suggest so), but your songs are helping me cling to the tiniest shred of hope. So thank you.
I’m really looking forward to the concert (especially Clean). It would mean the world to me if Begin Again was played.
