#IT'S SO JOEVER FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH

[sindarinsmoke]

I AM SORRY FOR THE GOOD OMENS SPAM I JUST- I GJHUH- IHHGHUH-

[shiftperception]

25 this weekend. I don’t like this ride anymore can I pretend I’m a beloved game franchise celebrating its 25th anniversary instead of a barely human entity that’s failed all markers of adulthood.

[clowningaroundmars]

the way that i am now downloading stock market news apps......... and squinting at these crazy ass news articles and learning finance terms n shit.... trying to read these number and graphs........

i am morphing into a middle aged dad of 3 kids. 🧍‍♂️

[wewontbesleeping]

my hot take is that if you knowingly fuck someone else's boyfriend you shouldn't be allowed to have a private instagram

[briar-berry]

from now on i will only be referring to my mental health by “it’s so joever” and “we’re so fucking back”

[mytearsrricochet]

1989 was the first album release I was active on tumblr for and I still vividly remember being a sophomore in high school staying up sitting at my computer desk playing the cd in the disc player of my tower computer reading the lyrics on azlyrics (because genius wasn’t really A Thing as much) and turning off my screen every time I heard my grandmas footsteps in the hallway. saving urls as I heard the lyrics. posting so many things about my mental health tagging Taylor so I could get a like. hearng wtny for the first time. I still remember the moment I heard wildest dreams and it was so joever for 15 year old me. 1989 is so quintessential.

[shapeshivvter]

I don't vent or talk about my mental health much but not gonna lie chat its so joever I actually feel like dogshit . I will be back when I feel better ermmm brbsiessssss

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Okay the thinking things with champagne problems (in relation to the whole YLM after it came out): champagne problems as a title is so interesting because it's like...rich people problems? And there's a lot of things about her recent-ish works which makes me think the whole "you have everything, you cannot understand X, Y, Z" which ties into the idea of having champagne problems. So the broken engagement, being fucked in the head etc. all ties into that idea. And yet I think folklore (maybe) and evermore (definitely) are: there are fixable cracks here and not "this relationship is doomed". So I don't think champagne problems ties into it, but god it does make me wonder what she was hearing at home sometimes.

This is so interesting to me, because I always loved the title “champagne problems” because I’ve loved the term since I first heard it long ago (in the same vein as “rich people problems,” “first world problems” etc.) it reminded me of being a kid hearing family members joke about “having champagne tastes on a beer budget” lol.

Obviously the story of “champagne problems” is fictional (according to her, college sweethearts who are on totally different pages) but I’d be surprised if like much of folkmore, her personal feelings weren’t somehow infused. And from what we’ve pieced together in the wake of Joever, the details may not be real but the broad strokes maybe were (because of the “all breakups are the same” of it all). The whole, one person being ready to take the next step and the other breaking away, the implied mental health struggle, the miscommunication, even maybe the blindsiding of the breakup yikes, along with what we know now… well it may have felt topical at the time.

(I wrote a post about another realization I had about it last fall but I’m ok my phone so I can’t go looking for it lol.)

With the “quiet resentment” and “he don’t understand me” of it all, I also would not be surprised if the “champagne problems” of her own struggles hit a little too close to home for her. There’s obviously no way to know unless she ever writes about it, but I do get the feeling the perceived legitimacy of their respective struggles was weighted in one direction and don’t think it was in her favour.

[taylortruther]

One of your anons said something about how hard it is to be someone struggling mentally and hear the way the fandom talks about Joe. I don't remember the exact thing they said but I think about this a lot. It's hard to struggle and get the feeling that you're a burden on people around you. "Is it really your anxiety

That stops you from giving me everything?

Or do you just not want to?" is so harsh if someone said this to me when I was at a bad time I'd be so angry and upset.

But as someone who's been the Taylor in this kind of situation this line (and Renegade as a song) perfectly captures this feeling. And the thing is that, no matter how much you try to be decent and supportive, you still resent your partner for their struggles and you feel really, really shitty about it. And you know it's insensitive but you really do wonder if it's really their anxiety or they just don't want you, or they just don't want to get better and everything's very shitty and it's even more shitty when you're struggling yourself and they're too deep in their shit to notice (which is what I get from You're Losing Me).

Sorry to bring up joever this has been sitting on my mind

yeah, i think the way the fandom talks about it sometimes feels pretty insensitive. mostly because on one hand, mental health issues are very personal, and they manifest in relationships so differently... it's impossible for fans to know how bad it was. also, a lot of is conjecture (in that yes we know it was an issue but how big? there's a lot of assumption.)

but i saw something on reddit the other day that if your relationship has seen really hard times, where one person is really struggling, sometimes you will simultaneously love and hate that person. and when the dark time passes, the love is what makes you stay and help them and get your relationship back to steadier ground... but the hate is what makes it hard. because you resent that you were the person holding both of you afloat and steering the ship during a storm. and i haven't truly experienced that, but i get it. to be the person keeping faith, staying strong, etc. is draining. and it's also extremely painful knowing you put your partner through that which kinda speaks to how much you must be struggling.

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

Thinking about the convo today on my dash about joever and midnights and renegade and you’re losing me, and people are pointing out that she wanted to help him through the dark stuff and they needed to trust each other, and I agree that Renegade is a warm and hopeful song, but I also don’t necessarily think that the relationship died bc of some sort of failure to accomplish what renegade sets out to be done. Like maybe he did trust her and she helped him and things were good for a while and it was precisely that work which led them to the conclusion that their relationship wasn’t going to be feasible going forward. 2 people who start their relationship both in a not great mental health space very easily could both help each other get better/process some intense stuff but then naturally grow apart or realize that their priorities or personalities are incompatible and compromises that used to feel reasonable don’t feel so doable any more. I don’t think that absolves the way she describes him as disinterested and uncaring in YLM but it feels like a slightly different core issue than renegade, though probably related at the root (he seems fundamentally kinda rude…) and honestly after the series of relationships that followed Mr Sunshine, I don’t blame her at all for thinking of joe as a dreamy kind hearted gentle soul, but given the whole way we’ve been talking about midnights as sort of like a sobering up/choices/self growth thing, she probably realized like…. ���Ohhhh my god this guy is actually not even very nice even when he isn’t extremely depressed and maybe my adoring and devoted fans aren’t the problem, it’s him 😬😬😬” and I think it’s suuuper reasonable that it took her over a year to process that and act on it by ending things for good.

[bisluthq]

My unpopular opinion is you don’t need to be exes to waltz back into rekindled flames if your relationship has been on and off life support for 18 months (still a committed couple, but a dying relationship). Like when you get to that point that it’s fizzling out and you both want it back, the rekindling can be magical and you’ve got butterflies again and it’s with someone you know so well, so it’s all very safe and cozy, there’s none of that fear of falling in love with someone for the first time because you’ve woken up next to them for years and know how they take their tea or coffee and know their habits and tells. It’s safe.

It’s like everything described in Labyrinth - that feeling like your relationship is crashing and they show up just in time and make you fall in love with them all over again. It’s beautiful when it happens and feels like a relief.

But it needs consistent effort and momentum and not just a few gestures, or the plane just goes right back down again. And I do think the Joever was ripping off a Band-Aid and just had to be done after a while.

I go back and forth over the muse of loml because it can apply to Joe or matty in how I perceive the story being told. But I also think it can be about neither one specifically too. Was it safe to pick matty who may have said he’d marry her within a year instead of being starry eyed with Joe, even if the stars are from the past when their rs was better? Or is she referring to tatty 1.0 and even though she was starry eyed for him then, as she mentions in Chloe & co, he was a lot and she couldn’t watch it, so she chose not to be with him and be “safe” instead (metaphorically for her heart and also literally with mental health knowing when to step away from someone if you can’t handle their life).

If we didn’t know any of the lore and this was her debut album about normies as muses, I think the interpretations could be different. We have some context, but I just find it interesting from a writing perspective that it could apply to multiple men from her past with hints of them in there, but nothing screaming a defining characteristic or situation (compared to SLL or TSMWEL which seemingly have clear baby daddies).

She also tends to personify a feeling a lot, which helps make her songs relatable even with Uber specific details. So the “I’ll see you until I die” could even be her talking to her grief that was so crushing she thought she’d die multiple times. More likely she imagined growing up and dying alone and being on her death bed seeing one particular face, sort of like if the prophecy and fortnight collided, but that’s what’s so cool about her, she doesn’t hold back and she isn’t afraid to say exactly how she feels OR embellish it and compare herself to a woman gone mad who will fantasise about killing her cheating husband and dumping his body in a swamp in Florida, or killing her soul mate’s perfect wife, or comparing herself to legends or characters in ancient mythology to express herself. Obviously I’m a fan, but she’s such an interesting writer it’s hard to think anything she says is ever at face value, even when it’s something like a line from invisible string where the grass was green which is very much a face value lyric lol

okay I agree with this and love this take! I never thought about the rekindled flames as that moment when things actually go well when generally they’re going badly and I still don’t know that it’s that just based on the rest of the song lol but you’re absolutely right, that’s a fair feeling and perhaps there are deeper ways of looking at that song that I’ve been missing!

[magxit]

🎀 anon again. Mag I think I saw the wrong lyrics for I Can Fix Him before, now I definitely think it's about Matty. My Boy Only Breaks his Favorite Toys is probably about Joe - she seems to be talking about a long-term relationship and there's some references that could be about him. I would say this one was written in 2022.

Fortnight is about Matty but mentions Joe cheating and was also probably written in 2022.

I wouldn't say Florida!!! is about any of them but I think she's referencing the breakup with Joe in this one and he's the cheating husband again lol

I still can't get the full lyrics to The Alchemy but streets are saying it's either about Matty or about Travis (there are a lot of references to football but some are saying the chorus gives mixed signals)

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me seemssss to be about Joe but I'm not sure? Like it's not specific at all and could be about any ex who treated her badly, even Matty. Maybe that's the point. Also it's very harsh, the mad woman of this album.

I don't have the lyrics to Fresh Out The Slammer anymore but I thought it was about Matty when I saw it for the first time. The slammer was the RS with Joe. But I'm not sure, I don't really remember about the lyrics.

TTPD (the song) is def about Matty again lol just like The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived and But Daddy I Love Him (she cooked him with TSMWEL and he didn't deserve TTPD)

Didn't listen to Guilty as sin but ppl are saying it's about Matty too.

So Long, London is obviously about Joe and it made me feel a little sad for him because he seems to have real issues with his mental health but he also cheated so fuck him (but fuck Matty Healy more. With all due respect Mag)

I'm inclined to think loml is about Matty but the references to marriage left me wondering. Maybe it's about both??? The song is so Matty coded but at the same time it's also Joever coded lol and I found it interesting that she doesn't call the guy the love of her life.

I would say Down Bad is about Matty bc she mentions stage, so she was on tour, and she implies that she was love bombed just like in almost every song about him.

Same about I Can Do It With a Broken Heart 💀

Clara Bow about herself.

Don't remember about The Black Dog.

.