And Now that We're Grown...

What I would tell Taylor Swift about her boyfriend's "competitive" rage

CW: Domestic Violence (please care for yourself and skip this one if you need to)

The morning after the Super Bowl she sent me a DM, “Do you plan to write about Travis Kelce’s aggression as it connects to domestic violence?”

Full disclosure: I rolled my eyes.¹ Maybe it was a micro-crumbling from the pressure I occasionally feel to write thoughtfully about every single cultural moment. Maybe I was just tired from watching a game I don’t even understand so late into my Sunday evening.

“That’s not my lane,” I replied, sugaring up my inner scowl. “I’m sure plenty of people will write about it, and I look forward to reading.”

What I meant by “that’s not my lane” was that I am not a domestic violence survivor. Though we don’t have to earn every opinion, some things require an insider’s lens. But I noticed my quickness to blur my own perspective. I could have simply said, “I haven’t personally been impacted by domestic violence.” Instead, I tapped out a carefully-worded reply, aware I was avoiding something but unwilling to reflect.

Sure enough, in the days that followed I was tossed into the currents of competing opinions. Everyone calm down, it’s football! and It’s a major red flag! and everything in between. Some people named it rage and abuse. Others called it testosterone, adrenaline, the thrilling theater of a relentlessly competitive nature, “disrespectful,” at worst. Could it even be evidence of a traumatic brain injury lurking from all those innocent “scuffles?”²

Depending on my mood, my hunger level, maybe the slant of the sun, I silently agreed and argued against all of them. I should have known there was trouble when I found myself casually asked Cory, “Do you think Travis Kelce’s aggression is a read flag for Taylor?” The micro-flare shot into my atmosphere by that one, innocent question should have had me smelling sulfur.

I was more inclined to think about how differently this would have played out if the sideline hostility had been dealt by a Black man, or a Black woman, or even any woman. Would White people rush to to their defense? I was over this thread. Let Taylor be loved!

Then, without warning or conscious consent, I remembered the rocking chair.

~

I recently stumbled on a journal I’d kept in adolescence. For someone who became a prolific writer, I was astonishingly spotty when it came to journaling, especially when you consider how much emphasis my faith upbringing put on the practice (especially - maybe exclusively? with girls.) Every page is as boring as day old bread. I wrote the same entry, over and over and over, and addressed each one to God.

You don’t write to God about hidden desire. There is no speakable rebellion in the house of the Lord, and all I ever wanted, or all I was willing to say I wanted, was to live there. As much as I’d love to uncover the hidden gears that kept me ticking from twelve, to fifteen, to college, and beyond, all I get are self-conscious screeds on the boys I liked at any given time. Will he ever like me back, God?

There’s no buried treasure, no map pointing to who I really was. What did she care about? What did she secretly want? Who did she hate? Which sins were her bittersweet poison? What did she love best about her? How limber, how far-reaching, was her imagination for the future? What were the clues?

Instead, there's:

“I want to make you smile when I show you how thankful I am and how much I love you.”

“Help me to live for you!”

“I want to get my butt in gear and be what you intend for me to be!”

“Lord, I want to make you happy.”

“I want to be more disciplined! In my studies, my jobs, and especially in my relationship with you!”

“I want to make you proud of me!”

So. Many. Exclamation points!

So. Much. Shame.

I was an A-student with unpierced ears and a quilted Bible cover, obsessed with the fear that I was failing God. As far back as I can see, the sum of my faith experience was pinned to the bullseye of finding a husband and being loyal to the belief that I was less than enough.

“‘cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” Fifteen, Taylor Swift

I was fifteen when he showed interest in me. I wouldn’t drive for another year, but my cheeks were hot in the bleachers when he screamed “Fuck!” across the tennis court, slamming his racquet into the baseline.

By sixteen, we were malignantly serious. I stalled on getting my driver’s license because he, at two years older, had his. It was his idiotic car that would scream off to the side of the road without warning, his passenger seat where I sat as he roared, “Get out!” inches from my face, knowing I had nowhere to go. It was in his car where he would calm down just enough to not actually leave me and it was in his fucking car where he would apologize and cry, never knowing why he “gets this way.” It was his car that finally did leave me stranded, and his car that eventually circled back to get me. (It is typing these words about his car that makes my heart pound in my chest at the age of 47 at the public library.)

At seventeen I had my senior pictures taken in an old-school photographer’s studio. He liked the one where I wore blue jeans and a white t-shirt, classic American White girl, wearing a coy (suggestive?) smile. I ordered him an 8x10 and put it in a grocery store frame. He loved it, until the day he lost another tennis tournament and seethed the entire way home, hellbent on making someone - anyone - pay for his faults. I thought I excelled at turning his skies back to blue but ducked just fast enough for my 8x10 innocence to sail past my head and shatter against the wall behind me. He eventually replaced the frame, but the broken glass had left a permanent scar across my left cheek in the photo.

All I remember from the night he threw a rocking chair at me was that we were in his living room and no one else was home. I remember knowing I should leave, but also knowing I couldn’t. There were no cell phones in the early 90’s and I was ten miles from home. I thought about walking to a neighbor’s house and calling my parents. I knew they would come. Instead, I stuck it out. I was probably embarrassed. I was definitely scared. And I’m sure it wasn’t long before he apologized. Besides, he had always respected my sexual boundaries. Wasn’t that what mattered most? Didn’t that rare fact define his character?

I don’t know if he would remember any of this. We haven’t spoken in almost thirty years. I don’t care, because all I owe him are glass shards and broken chairs. I hope he has healed, and I’m glad I didn’t wait to find out.

“Are there still beautiful things?” - Seven, Taylor Swift

Much ink has been spilled on Taylor’s presentation of girlhood. It asks the meatiest questions, like, “Whose girlhood gets to be cherished?”³ Truth is, I do see my own cherished girlhood mirrored in hers. But I have a hunch we also shared religious upbringings. The same people-pleasing skills she bent into billions line the yellowed pages of my “please love me” notes to God.

Our girlhoods were strung with rope swings and sustained on church potlucks; Midwestern-fortified with hay dust and married parents. They smelled like woodsmoke and Coppertone. They looked like blue jeans and white T-shirts.

It’s difficult, nearly impossible, to reconcile why I endured it. Did our bones believe the only way to atone for breezy childhoods was to absorb secondhand trauma as if it were air? Was training to fix broken boys the top prize in a system fixated on martyrs and the subjugation of girls? Was our worth tethered to our quick reflexes, adept at dodging shrapnel and dealing snap-forgiveness?

WWJD?

“I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil at nineteen” - Could’ve Would’ve Should’ve

I don’t know Taylor’s enneagram number, but thinking about this has me wondering if I didn’t disassemble myself from scared and alone then reassemble to a fiery enneagram 8, right there in his stupid red car. I wonder if that era isn’t a clue into why I spent a year sitting on a therapist’s sofa to the internal soundtrack of, “You’re on Your Own, Kid.” (You always have been.)

My friends who lived the alternate universe of my childhood often say they regret nothing from their upbringing. It made them who they are, etc… I never understand it. Suffering isn’t created equally, and to believe it is misses the point. Many of you reading this have suffered far worse than I have. Still, I can look back and see a world where once you’ve survived enough, redemption tastes like pride for the shit you learned to carry.

But Taylor, baby, we are not nineteen anymore.

It seems we’ve both been on the dodging-side of unresolved trauma. For me, it spilled over in ways that were confusing. Was it abusive? I didn’t know for sure, then. (My impulse to keep it like a secret was a clue.)

I know now.

“And I’ll look back and regret how I ignored them when they said ‘run as fast as you can.’” Dear John by Taylor Swift

I was Team Travis and Taylor. I wanted you to ride off into the sunset together. I wanted lasting love for you - still do! I watched “the shove” in real time, and I’ve watched it a dozen times since. I wanted it to be a fluke.

And I’m worried it isn’t.

Last week, still plagued by these questions and nagged by these memories, I asked Cory more about his perspective. “You played football, was this just a football thing? Did you have teammates who acted that way?”

He paused. (He always pauses! A beautiful thing!) “There were people who acted like that, but they also acted like that off the field. I never knew someone who was otherwise healthy but explosive on the field. The calm guys were consistent. The unhinged guys were, too.”

Over the next two days, he asked two groups of incarcerated people, “Was that Travis Kelce thing a red flag?” Unanimously, the men and women, all with layers of domestic violence experience, said yes. Unequivocally, yes.

Taylor, I am begging you to keep your head in the game. Stay awake. Watch ruthlessly. Red flags don’t fade. Two times is a pattern. I wish someone had stepped in for me. I grieve that I allowed them to believe it wasn’t necessary. I regret it all the time.

It’s true, every girlhood should be cherished. It’s also true that we aren’t little girls anymore.

But she is still a living part of us.

And it is never too late to protect her.

National Domestic Violence Hotline:

800-799-7233

1. To the sender of that DM: a sincere thank you for prompting some important and overdue reflection. (The eye roll was not personal!)

2. Football players have a “downright extraordinary” rate of domestic violence arrests. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/09/16/does-football-make-you-violent-examining-the-evidence/?sh=6b293219fb7e

3. This quote comes from the NPR Code Switch podcast titled, Taylor Swift and the unbearable whiteness of girlhood.” I highly recommend listening!