On this weekend 9 years ago, I was sitting on the floor of Taylor Swift’s Nashville home having an out-of-body experience listening to #1989, a month before the album would be released and go on to spend 11 weeks atop the Billboard 100, launch Taylor’s first stadium world tour, and eventually win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
At the time, I was in my final semester at the World’s Largest Christian University™️, after trading the conservative Georgia suburb I grew up in for a somehow-even-more-red Virginia town on the banks of the James River. I was a church attending YoungLife leader with a part time job selling guns at Dick’s Sporting Goods in a strip mall with more fast food and fried chicken chains than should be legally allowed to share a ZIP code. I also was slowly coming to terms with the fact my “struggle with same sex attraction” (as queerness is often one-dimensionally defined in conservative circles) was perhaps more than “the phase” the ~spiritual life director~ in my residence hall assured me that it was.
I’d slowly began the arduous journey of coming out by opening up to close friends, and keeping up an angsty Tumblr blog (~inconsolable longings~) filled with vulnerable poetry and #honestcaptions, where I tried to make sense of depression, Jesus, and my sexuality… writing online became an outlet and vessel to process and contain the dark night unfolding in my soul.
Taylor (and a box of Franzia) kept me company as I penned a lot of those #latenightthoughts. I’ve been a #Swiftie since before it was a hashtag and have long admired Taylor’s ability to share her story in a way that’s so raw, authentic, and deeply human that people couldn’t argue with it; moreover, her writing transcends her personal experience in such a way that it invites others to see themselves inside it.
I wanted to be like that.
One early Fall day, I was sitting at Bible study in a Virginia coffee shop and received a call from an unrecognized 615 number. I answered and received a cryptic invitation to come to Nashville for an event a couple of week’s later that I “wouldn’t want to miss.” I was given a date and time, the address of a public park, a “password” (“Bake Sugar Castles”, if you’re curious) along with a warning that my invitation could be rescinded if I posted online or I told anyone aside from my immediate family why I was headed south to Tennessee. (To this day I don’t know how Taylor’s team got my phone number. 😝)
I showed up to the parking lot, gave the password, relinquished my phone, wallet, and keys, and crawled into the back of a limo with other fans, content creators, and at least one Rolling Stone journalist. We were either about to meet our idol or be immortalized forever on a true crime podcast for falling victim to a very elaborate kidnapping.
We drove for 20 minutes or 2 hours; I’d lost all meaningful sense of time as soon as we lumbered up the driveway to Taylor’s family home outside Nashville.
The entire experience feels like a bit like a psilocybin fever dream.
After bites by the pool, and a lovely long exchange with Taylor’s Mom about how at first she thought Taylor was a little nuts for inviting strangers from the Internet into their family home (fair, tbh), we moved inside, crowding into a living room filled with Grammy Awards and family photos to sit on pillows, blankets, and mismatched chairs (a Taylor design staple).
When Taylor entered the room you would have thought Christ himself had returned.
She knew everyone by name, where we were from, and—in my case—had even found her way to my angsty and melodramatic corner of the Internet to read some of the things I’d written.
After introductions, Taylor pulled out a very beat-up iPhone, queued up the first track on #1989, and the synthesizer-filled beat of “Welcome to New York” filled the room.
Everybody here was someone else before
And you can want who you want
Boys and boys and girls and girls
I started to cry.
I didn’t realize it then, but what I felt in that moment was belonging; the feeling of seeing myself in a story I’d never heard before.
The 1989 album was Taylor’s first foray into a totally new sound and aesthetic—leaving country behind and transforming into a full-blown pop star. After hearing the stories behind each song, talking about the creative process, and passing around cookies she’d made that afternoon (seriously, who is Taylor Swift?), we all had a chance to spend with her 1:1.
I told her I wanted to move to New York, she shared her favorite brunch spots (Bubby’s in Tribeca), and we bonded over recent breakups, hers was Harry Styles and mine was a closeted missionary kid who refused to tell me his last name (we’re feeling the same things, right now!). We talked about our mutual love of writing and—in a moment that would give me courage for years to come—she complimented mine.
As I look back on the photos and the note I scrawled in the bathroom and left in her hand as we said goodbye, I can’t help but be proud of how much has changed and how far we’ve come. I have a hunky partner, a house full of @eastforkpottery, framed @davidwhyte poems, queer-coded @jonodry art, and get to call the best little mountain town in North Carolina my home. (In the same time, Taylor’s released 7, nearly 8, more albums, won 5 more Grammys, and had 3 world tours, but comparing us isn’t the point. 😂)
The point is, as I get older, heal my nervous system from PTSD, spiritual trauma, and feel more at home in my body, I’m realizing we don’t always know how to wrap language around life’s highs and lows until long after we experience them.
As I reflect on the experience nearly a decade later, I’m realizing the importance of representation; of telling—and truly listening—to the kinds of stories that reflect the lived experiences of the humans around us.
There’s also so much power in giving yourself permission to grow, evolve, and transform—even if it means people will say you’re too different or too much or that you've changed. And that's okay because they haven't been through the same things as you. And just because they can't understand it now doesn't mean that you should stay the same or be less you. It just means that maybe one day they'll realize that you were more important than whatever idea of you they wanted to keep instead.
Taylor taught me that. 💙