I guess I should start by saying that I’ve been listening to Taylor’s music since I was a kid, since the beginning. I don’t know what day I became a fan, but I know it was before Fearless came out, so it’s been around thirteen years. My mom used to be a teacher and one of her students gave her Taylor’s debut CD right around the time that she was going through her divorce. The song Tied Together With a Smile really hit home for my mom, so the CD stayed on repeat in the blue minivan I grew up riding around in. Then we bought Fearless when it came out, and Speak Now when it came out, and so on. We started seeing her in concert when the Speak Now World Tour came to St. Louis on August 13, 2011, and I joined Taylor Connect the very next day. The rest of my online fandom experience is history from there!
Taylor’s music has been there for me through absolutely everything, and when she followed my (at the time even MORE of a shitshow blog) on June 1, 2015, my heart soared. Every like and reblog I’ve gotten since has been cherished entirely and I have absolutely no idea how I got so lucky. A lot of people tell me I ‘deserve’ it but I just want to emphasize that we all DESERVE it, no one of us more than the rest!
As many of you know I started something called Positive Hour on my blog on April 30th, 2019. It ended up really making me happy, so I kept doing it, as many days as I had time to. On PosHour Day 19 (which occurred on June 5, 2019), Taylor came on my blog and liked 26 different posts (a combination of PosHour asks and selfies from Disabled Swiftie Selfie Night). Then, two days later, she came back and went through MORE PosHour asks and ended up liking 84 posts. I’m still honestly recovering from this shock and thought okay, this is it, I’ve peaked, I’ll never ask for anything again in life because I never could have DREAMED for this to happen. I never started PosHour to get noticed; I don’t continue it to get noticed. It makes me happy and it makes others happy too. Anyways, that’s just a backstory for stuff Taylor and I talk about later.
I got The DM on July 29, 2019, at 1:09 pm CST. I was driving home from lunch with my grandparents, parking my car down the street because we can’t park right next to my house, when I saw a locked notification come to my phone. My phone unlocked and I saw “taylornation sent you a DM: CONFIDENTIAL MESSAGE”. I’ve never turned my car off faster. I SPRINTED up probably a block or two uphill to my house, absolutely losing my mind, almost resulting in a heart attack - or realistically, an asthma attack. Oops.
I got my phone call while I was in a LOUD store at the mall looking at potential outfits to MEET TAYLOR IN??!?! I had to politely ask that they call me back in ten minutes and then busted ass to get to the car so they could call me. They called me 3:19 pm originally, and then again at 3:30 pm (that extra minute was STRESSFUL!) They gave me details about a secret location, a password I’d have to say (that I realized after the session, i NEVER HAD TO SAY. kinda disappointed. I was excited at the prospect of saying a secret password but go off), and reminded me approximately a thousand times not to tell anyone anything.
By the grace of GOD, I wasn’t scheduled to work Saturday the 3rd through Monday the 5th (except one evening shift at my waitressing job, which my boss kindly took me off). After the longest week of my life anticipating this trip, we left for Nashville early Saturday morning and listened to Taylor’s music the ENTIRE TIME. I felt SO chaotic the entire week on tumblr, trying to act like everything was fine and normal when, in fact, NOTHING WAS FINE NOR WAS IT NORMAL.
My mom, sister @taylorsairpods and I arrived in the afternoon and checked in. I saw some Taylor shirts here and there and we all did the eyeball emoji at each other, as I was also wearing merch. I found @tshifty in the parking lot and we ended up exploring Nashville together, taking pictures at murals and getting coffee and being chaotic on tumblr interacting with each other. (Hey @colorsinautumn, I’ll never forget laughing my actual ass off with Kristin while we looked at your iconic pictures. Never stop being you.) I also met other adorable friends in the hotel that I wasn’t expecting to see and it was generally just a soft and lovely time.
Somehow I fell asleep and the next day was SHOWTIME KIDS! We ate at Bread Co (some of you may know it as panera…sigh) and willed the clock to move faster towards the time for us to sign in and everything. Guys, I had the stress shits so bad we made a special trip to Target to get imodium. Yes, I debated whether or not I should share that part of the story. Yes, I decided it was important to share to Remain Authentic About My Experience. It must’ve worked because I very luckily Did Not Have to Poop in Taylor Swift’s Technically Andrea Swift’s House. (It’s a good thing Secret Sessions are once in a lifetime because if they weren’t, and Taylor ever reads this, she would decide right now not to ever invite me to anything ever again, and I couldn’t blame her TBH).
Finally it was fifteen minutes before sign-in time, which I find an appropriate time to be early to things because I’m early to EVERYTHING, so I went to the meeting location and found other people dressed cute and looking softly nervous and we were all just like holding our NDA’s and being EXCITED and it was pure. Kristin and I were casually chatting at one point when mf @madeurmarkonme chaotically tapped Kristin on the shoulder and we TRULY LOST OUR MINDS. So exciting. Anyways, TN gave us like an HOUR window for signing in and literally didn’t come outside to get us until the END of the window but it’s FINE we went inside and signed in and chatted with each other and it was great. All the TN workers were really nice and would be sarcastic with us when we were jokingly sarcastic with them and it was cool. As soon as we signed in was when they took our phones and it was so weird not to be able to check the time because I just do it reflexively? But yeah. So they got the first two buses loaded and sent off and I was put on the third bus, final bus. I ended up being the FIRST PERSON GETTING ON THE BUS which like, doesn’t mean anything, but I was weirdly excited about it. Kristin and I sat next to each other, of course. The bus sang off-key Taylor songs the entire way there and it was fantastic. Kristin and I were also the first two to get OFF the bus, so the first two to walk up to Taylor’s house holding hands and practically SKIPPING except it was GRAVEL so we didn’t skip because it had rained and we would have wiped out. We got lil stickers put on our wristbands and wALKED ONTO THE PATIO BY THE POOL AND LIKE WHAT. (WHICH ALSO OUR WRISTBANDS WERE A SOFT YELLOW, THANK YOU MISS SWIFT YOU KNOW I FUCKING LOVE YELLOW ACTUALLY YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THAT BUT I DO. I LOVE YELLOW) (SO MUCH)
ALSO THE WINE SIGN IS SO CUTE GUYS like it’s cute in the video AND cute in person (MUCH LIKE MISS SWIFT HERSELF). Honestly, eVERYTHING was cute. There were some family pictures of the Swifts and Andrea had so much Fearless stuff up and it was just SOFT. And the food was yummy, although I could barely eat because I was so stressed and excited. We were mingling (EXCITEDLY MINGLING, as Miss Swift HERSELF might say what hi taylor) and then finally we all got to go inside. We somehow scored spots like RIGHT in front of Taylor’s chair, in the second ‘row’ if you will. We waited a lil while and then TAYLOR WALKED IN and I don’t even know what the first thing I thought was because it’s like my brain split into a million pieces and there were a million individual thoughts running through my head. Things like MYBESTFRIEND and PINKHAIRTIPS and OHMYGODILOVEHER and ISTHISREALLYHAPPENING and OHSHITIMATTHESECRETSESSIONS and IFSHEKNOWSMEIWILLEATMYFOOT and WHYDOESTHISALREADYFEELSONORMAL EVENTHOUGHWEAREALLSCREAMINGOURHEADSOFF and then she sat down and got us all to quiet down very adorably and then, in her beautiful lil voice, when “WELCOME TO THE LOVER SECRET SESSIONS” and i ASCENDED. Truly ascended. Then she gave us a spiel about please don’t leak things and please don’t quote me and so like. I’m not going to! Because I respect and love her and I also want the Secret Sessions to be able to continue in future years and the way for that to happen is for past Secret Sessioners to respect the process :) so YEAH! Let’s just say Lover is HER BEST ALBUM (in my opinion) and I freaking love it and I love her and getting to hear her put in her own words why she wrote what she wrote, and did certain productions, and put it at this point in the album was SO SPECIAL. I love analyzing all this stuff and trust me, there’s still tons of unanswered questions I have that I will be analyzing for myself on here, so I still get to have my fun in that respect, but wow guys. It was amazing to personally see how her brain works. Plus, when certain lyrics would hit, that I’d post “YESSs TAYLOR” about on here, it was amazing being able to just say that TO HER. I cried three times and I held hands with Kristin so much and with Charissa and there were many hugs and at one point when Kristin and I were holding hands and being snuggly, Taylor literally was talking about friendship and having a Person and looked dead-on at us and said “YOU TWO!” and in that moment she put her seal of approval on our friendship and I died. So soft.
After the album they brought out The Rice Krispies and we went back out onto the patio to mingle and eat and wait to meet Taylor. All the minors met Taylor first with their parents and then they started going alphabetically. When they called my name, my friends and stuff cheered and I almost cried??! And like as I was walking in with the TN girl I was like “oh sorry that it’s loud” idk why I apologized, I just apologize a lot, but she was like NO THE CHEERING IS CUTE and it was just pure. And I was really awkward at this point because I was so nervous so she was like “you can just stand here” so I like quickly checked myself in the full-length mirror bc of COURSE there was a full length mirror there, very soft, and then the security guard told me I could stand at the stairs and then they opened the door and like. Guys, I’ve read stories where some people walked confidently in, where some people ran in, where some people skipped in. That was not me. I was. So. Nervous. I walked in slowly and was like not sure where Taylor would be standing and I looked to my left and before I could even open my mouth, she went “EMMA!!!” and I was like “OH MY GOD YOU KNOW MY NAME” and we were HUGGING and she was like “OF COURSE I LOVE YOU!!!” and i was like “I LOVE YOU TOO!!!” and then this conversation is when I die. It went something like this:
Taylor: Your positivity nights make me so happy! (at this point we had pulled away from a long hug) I just love what people send to you, and you have the best, most genuine responses! Thank you for doing what you do on the internet!
Me: (trying to think of a single word in the English language) wow, thank you SO MUCH, Taylor!
Taylor: I literally go on your blog when I’m sad to make myself feel better! The internet is such a dark and negative place sometimes but your blog is such a bright place on it!
Me: (HUGGING HER AGAIN OFC) WHAT?! Oh my gosh, WOW thank you!
Taylor: Some of the stuff you get is so amazing, like I remember one person sent you an ask about how they had gotten a raise at work and so they were able to afford better food for themselves. That just really hit me, like wow!
Me: Oh yeah I remember that one! (and then we talked about some other anons but I do want to keep part of this convo private hehe)
Taylor: I bet it can be kind of a lot sometimes, doing all of this!
Me: I mean honestly I love doing it, but it was a lot right after you liked so many posts-
Taylor: OH MY GOSH I BET HAHA IM SORRY!!
Me: OH don’t worry im NOT complaining; I seriously love doing this! I actually started positive hour because one night it was kinda hard in the fandom and I was feeling really down like nobody liked me, I didn’t have any friends, but in the back of my head I knew that wasn’t true and I decided I didn’t want to wallow so I just posted a little “send me positive things” prompt and then, I loved what resulted, so I kept doing it.
Taylor: I love that so much, turning it into good energy!
Me: Thank you! It was inspired because when I was little I kind of went through some hard stuff and so I went through this phase where I would complain a lot and my mom didn’t want me to grow up negatively so she told me that it was important to pick up more balloons, or positives, than rocks, or negatives, and would encourage me every day to tell her at least as many balloons as rocks from my day!
Taylor: That’s amazing, like I knew this energy you have had to come from somewhere so that totally makes sense! I love this!
Me: well I love YOU!
And then we kept talking about other stuff, from how Treacherous is my favorite song and how I want a tattoo of it to my state of grace tattoo to a certain lyric to how my mom is going to love a certain song on Lover to how Taylor also impacted my sister to how much some of the songs on the album meant to me and how much this evening meant to me and how much Taylor means to me and we hugged a million times, and then Taylor was like “well we HAVE to get, like, the cutest picture together; do you have an idea in mind?” and I told her I’d love a Classic Hugging picture then we took a picture and she was like “do you wanna make sure you like it?” and i’m typically the kind of person who will say I like anything because I’m just very easygoing but when I saw the original I knew I’d regret making IT my pic so I nicely asked if we could redo it and she was like OF COURSE and so we did and we checked it and i fuckING LOVED IT GUYS it’s SO PERFECT and i told her I couldn’t believe she did her open-mouth smile for me and she said it is a rare one because she’s insecure about it but I told her i LOVE Her open mouth smile, that we all do, and i’m not trying to read into anything but she DEFINITELY did her open-mouth smile more in other pics that night later and at LA so between what I said and then what we ALL said after I posted about it I think maybe we’re helping Taylor with her insecurity AWW and Taylor was also like “you’re REALLY TALL” and we talked about our heights and then it was time to go, TN was lowkey acting like ok emma you’re taking up too much of Taylor’s time SJLFJSD but politely so, and as i was leaving after our final hug, taylor was like “BYE EMMA!!!” and i was like “BYE TAYLOR I’LL SEE YOU ONLINE” and not even a DAY later because I met her august 5th in the AM and got my pic august 5th in the PM, i posted a video of me getting my pic and SOBBING and she liked it so she dID SEE ME ONLINE and guys it was just the best day of my life and I miss her hugs so much already i love her SO MUCH and i will never be able to put into more concise words what this day meant to me. thank you if you read this
