The Longest and Best Relationship I’ve Ever Had
by Helmi Henkin
I’ve been the “Taylor Swift girl” since 5th grade. In 2006, my best friend at the time played “Tim McGraw” for me, and thus began a 20-year love affair with Taylor’s music that continues to this day. Since first becoming a fan, I’ve seen her in concert 10 times at all six of her headlining tours. I have the words to every song on her first nine albums memorized, and to many other songs on the rest of her discography (admittedly not all of them). My merch collection includes at least 21 of her album-themed blankets. My relationship to Taylor has evolved over time as we’ve both gotten older. Though I haven’t vibed with all of her music, that doesn’t change the fact that much of it resonates with me, and it has resonated with me during the best and worst times of my life.
I’ve never felt as understood by an artist as I have by Taylor. That’s not to say that other artists haven’t had a similar comforting effect on me with their songwriting. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a fan for so long or because she has put words to so many diverse experiences in my life, but Taylor burrowed into my mind and heart in an irreversible way. In the fandom, we describe Swiftieism as a sleeper cell. For those of us who are “Senior Swifties” (longtime Taylor Swift enthusiasts), we may feel our connection to Taylor ebb and flow, depending on what she’s up to. The sleeper cell always reactivates eventually, though, whether by nostalgia or by something new. Tumblr user philcollinsenjoyer described this precisely when he said, “but bitch when love story comes on.”
Experiencing tumultuous times during middle and high school is a rite of passage in adolescence. When frenemies in the theatre productions I was in made me feel misunderstood and lonely, listening to “The Outside” and “A Place in This World” was a daily occurrence. My sophomore year, I fell in (unrequited) love with a guy in my French class and listened to “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “Treacherous” on repeat. After my first date with my first-ever boyfriend, I danced around my room to “Fearless,” “Fifteen,” and “Everything Has Changed.” A couple of months later when that boy broke my heart, I cried myself to sleep for weeks to songs including “Last Kiss” and “Forever and Always (Piano Version),” and doodled the lyrics to “All Too Well” (of course) in the margins of my physics notebook. Before that breakup, her sadder songs seemed abstract, but when heartbreak delivered its critical blow, it made those songs painfully tangible. I felt like I couldn’t survive without them.
Just because I’m a grown-up now doesn’t mean this phenomenon ceased. Whenever I encounter bullies to this day (since some adults never grow out of their cruel streak), I scream-sing “Mean” to myself. Songs including “my tears ricochet,” “right where you left me,” and “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” have helped me cope with experiences of betrayal, grief, and trauma. I was in the top .3% of YouTube Music listeners for “Better Man (Taylor’s Version)” last year, and I can only imagine what the number would be if they counted my offline listening. The breakup songs that Taylor has released since the last time I experienced heartbreak, like “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” “Don’t You,” and “The Black Dog,” transport me like a time machine and make me wish I had those songs while I was wallowing in the abyss.
Romantic relationships have become more nuanced as I’ve gotten older, but luckily Taylor’s songwriting about them has too. For example, listening to “august” still makes me think of my relationship in college that also had an end-of-summer end-date and where the feelings were also lopsided (turns out I loved him more). Even though he didn’t like Taylor, he tolerated listening to reputation on repeat in my car. The day after I found out he liked me, I listened to “Delicate” in disbelief that our connection turned out to be stronger than I thought. After we broke up the first time, we rekindled our relationship for a few more months, which felt like a “This Love” moment. When he broke up with me the second time, I felt like “Death By A Thousand Cuts” described my sentiments exactly.
In 2010, right before Speak Now came out, I created my Tumblr account, and Taylor’s fandom was the first one I joined. Eventually, I became so active in it that I created a Taylor-specific side blog because some of my followers on my personal blog thought that I posted about her too much. Fast forward to 2015, a few days after my wisdom teeth removal surgery: I checked the notifications on my Taylor-themed side blog and found out that she followed me. I fell out of bed sobbing from surprise and joy. She never liked, reblogged, or replied to any of my posts, but I like to think that I helped her see other people’s posts by sharing them, and maybe even contributed successfully to her seeing someone’s request to meet at a concert.
Taylor’s music has been a gift to me, largely due to the love and companionship that it has brought into my life from people around the world. The friendships I formed through online interactions on Swiftie Tumblr and Twitter persist to this day. Most of my online friends are people I have never met in person, though some of those relationships have blossomed in “real life” too. Over the years, I have supported oomfs through the death of their family members, struggles with mental health conditions, and graduating from college and grad school. This spring, I went to a wedding for two of my mutuals who married each other. I met my current partner through a Twitter group chat that spawned from mutual interest in Taylor, which turned into us messaging privately (and flirting publicly) for months before I got the courage to call them and confess my feelings. After three years of dating long-distance, I moved in with them, and we celebrated five years together in early July.
It’s a beautiful and exceptional experience to feel as seen and understood by someone’s music as I do by Taylor’s, and to find the community that I have with others who feel similarly seen and understood by her. Her music has taken on meaning for me that extends beyond whatever experiences she was writing about. I’m far from alone in feeling this way, and that is what makes her one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. Taylor said to her fans at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards during her Artist of the Year acceptance speech, “You are the longest and best relationship I have ever had.” I hope she knows that I, and most of my closest friends, feel the same way.
Helmi is a therapist based in Washington, DC. She hasn’t been published since writing for Her Campus in college (Roll Tide), though she gained extensive writing experience since then by participating in fandom online and completing her Master of Social Work degree. Helmi has visited 98 countries on seven continents, but her favorite vacation spot is Helsinki, Finland, where her family is from.
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