#the vibe of all the surgeons started going down hill as soon as they got a 3d printer and decided that meant they were

[bookdork1]

i was so tired of every fucking surgeon on the show doing groundbreaking (tm) work and i am so glad we are basically back to helpless little clueless interns who are messy and passionate and not overly jaded yet. i missed that era (seasons 1-6, specifically) of greys

[tinyarmyofqueerfolkwrites]

Thank You, Taylor Swift

So, I’m going to put this under a cut, just given the sensitive nature of the post, and the fact it’s really long.

The very short, trigger free version, is that it’s a love letter to @taylorswift after listening to Lover for what feels like the millionth time and specifically why I relate so much to Soon You’ll Get Better. The part that references cancer, depression, and death is warned about with a clear, visible end. So it won’t just come up on anyone who reads this.

I’m not a big believer in finding romantic love. I’ve seen very little of it in my life, my parents have been fighting for as long as I can remember and that kind of darkness seems to have plagued my life. But that isn’t say I don’t believe it exists. I’m a writer and I have seen my characters fall in love. I have written love of all kinds, from platonic, to familial, to yes, even romantic love. As easy as it is written, it is infinitely harder to find, in my opinion.

I can say I’ve never been romantically in love. And that’s okay for me, for right now. I’m in a dark place in my life, have been for far longer than I sometimes want to think about, but I’m still moving. Part of why I’m still moving is because of my friends, of my chosen family, of the people who have been in my life to love me and to keep me going. That love means a lot to me. And so does this album.

It’s Nice To Have A Friend, as romantic as it ends, reminds me of the first friend I can truly say I could have loved romantically. He was my best friend from the ages of 11 to 17. He meant the entire world to me. We dated, sort of. It was secret and in the background, but he was there when my world first started falling apart. The song itself is sweet and soft and nice. It reminds me of Mary’s Song, which had been one of my favorite songs of the self titled album. Because, above all else, I love hearing about other people in love. 

Another song that reminds me of Nick, unfortunately, is Death By A Thousand Cuts. I spent a lot of time wrapped around his memory. Because he disappeared from my life. It was this weird period of my life and it hurt. I ended up losing a lot of people I thought were my friends, so to lose him too was too much. It hurt less because I loved him romantically and more because I he was my world in a lot of ways I didn’t know you could love another person.

I Forgot That You Existed is a song that now makes me think of him, and a few other “friends” that abandoned me at various points in my life. The people I’ve now forgiven and forgotten about enough to be able to remember the good times, and the bad, without getting hurt. It’s just indifference.

Paper Rings is the first song I definitely had to put on repeat. It’s so upbeat and honestly makes me just really happy. It’s a good dancing song, something to bounce around to and, in a sense, dream to. It reminds me of my sister and her boyfriend, honestly. They’re the first kind of proper romantic love I’ve ever really seen in my life. They are so sweet and understanding of each other and they just moved in together as a way to help my sister. She’s honestly thinking of proposing to him and it makes me really happy for her, and for them. He respects her and he respects me, which is something previous boyfriends of hers didn’t do. 

If you want to avoid the talk of cancer, death, and depression please skip down til you find the gif. Everything after that will be positive again, cos I refuse to end on a depressing note.

So, in December of 2018 my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I was living with my sister, it was Christmas time, mother didn’t tell us until after Christmas. It was weird for us. We’ve never had a good relationship with our mom, for a number of reasons, so hearing she had cancer came weird. I don’t know if it was shock or something else, but a lot of it was “it’s not the kind of cancer we imagined she’d get” cos she’s a smoker, so we figured, if anything, it’d be lung cancer.

Flash forward to late January and I’ve returned home with my parents. Mother is sick and needs someone to watch out for her while my dad works. I don’t like being back in the family home, it’s messy and fuels my depression, which fuels my anger. It’s not a good attitude to have when trying to care for someone with cancer, I know this. I just can’t help it sometimes, though I try.

Shortly after my return, mother started chemo and she started going down hill. I stopped sleeping in my own room so I was close to her at night when she was most liable to fall and hurt herself. And she did. A lot. And every time I fought to pick her up. I fought to pick her and up and stop the bleeding. It’s a thankless job, I knew this coming into it, but I had no choice. She’s my mom. Yeah, I have a really bad relationship with her and this isn’t liable to change, but this is something I have to do.

So, the first however many times I listened to Soon You’ll Get Better I didn’t necessarily react. And then September 4th rolled around. My grandmother, who was the kind of woman who pushed through everything, had been diagnosed with cancer so many times and come back every time, died. I didn’t have a good relationship with her either, barely knew her, she barely knew me but she was the stubborn sort. She died in the early morning hours, before I’d even gone to bed. I’d ask her not to die on my birthday (the 5th) and she didn’t, but it was hard to take either way.

Later that day, on my way to Orlando, to celebrate my birthday, I had my mom stop at Target. I needed a physical copy of Lover in my hands and I’d never gotten a Target Exclusive version of Taylor’s albums before so I needed it. Happy birthday to me, right? Well, I decided I wanted to play Soon You’ll Get Better for my mom. I cried. It was the first time I’ve cried in a really long time. And I want to kinda talk about why.

In doctor's office lighting, I didn't tell you I was scared That was the first time we were there Holy orange bottles, each night, I pray to you Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus too

I went with my mom to a number of her appointments with her, including sitting through chemo with her on more than one occasion. I was raised in the church but as I’ve gotten older lost my faith, lost what it means to believe in a higher power. Because I’ve been hated on in churches, being queer and trans. But in all of this I’ve re-found parts of my faith. 

I know delusion when I see it in the mirror You like the nicer nurses, you make the best of a bad deal I just pretend it isn't real

Something I’ve always done, something I got from my mother, is you take the bad things and you shove them under the rug. You forget they exist and I hate to say it, it’s what I’ve been doing. To whatever extent I can. Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if I don’t, y’know?

And I hate to make this all about me But who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do If there's no you?

It’s hard to explain that fear, thinking about what life would be like if she dies. Because as bad as my relationship with my mom is, she’s one of the only pieces of sanity I have close. I mean this in the sense that I talk to my mom a lot, about a lot of stupid stuff, and sometimes about deep stuff. Maybe I do it because I know she won’t remember all of it, or any of it, cos our conversations often happen late at night, but I do it. I talk to her and I don’t know who I’ll talk to like that if she doesn’t get better. 

Part of why I’m writing this is because she might not. My mom has a lot of health risks, things that make operating for the cancer dangerous. It’s another reason why my sister and I were surprised when they said she had pancreatic cancer. We found out today that while the surgeon is willing, she’s high risk. Being high risk, the anesthesiologist might deem her too risky. That, despite all of this, she may not be able to get the surgery to remove the tumor. She hasn’t had chemo since May because she’s been too sick and too weak. It’s possible that if they can’t do the surgery, she won’t be able to do chemo again either to keep in check. 

That’s hard to take, for all of us and part of me just wants to put Soon You’ll Get Better on repeat because what else can I do? I’ve done what I can but it’s just not enough. 

So, that’s the long winded explanation of why I love that song and relate to it so much. And, cos I probably made anyone reading this cry:

Now to try and end this on a much more positive note.

A lot of the songs on the album that I don’t necessarily have proper connections to, that I still love deeply. Cruel Summer, You Need To Calm Down and Me! have this vibe that makes me want to dance, flat out. I go way too hard to the bridge in Cruel Summer. Like, it’s just one of those things I do and I do so apologetically.

London Boy, Daylight,  Cornelia Street and Lover are dreamer songs. Songs that make me believe that love does exist in a romantic sense. That when things are rough and tumblr, I can listen to and feel better, cos at least for someone out there a love like that exists. One that is bright and brilliant and still so very soft. They’re also really good songs to dance to. Like, this album really is full of bops.

So, Taylor, should you take the time to read this long post by a random person on the internet, thank you. Thank you for Lover. Thank you for the truth. Thank you for being you. This album has been such a bright spot in my life right now. I take joy in the little things and I take a lot of joy out of this not-so-little thing. This album makes my heart happy, even in the dark and it’s a beautiful thing. 

Love, 

Charlie (they/he)