Serenity - A Journal Of Some Sort

don't read the last page...

There's a song, over the years, that I've found myself to have a special connection to. I've always been a huge Taylor Swift fan, but this one has always spoken to me in a way that none of the others did. It's one that's more of a lesser-known one, and it's off the album that most others don't really like, her reputation album. 

I personally love reputation. I'm not a huge country fan, and even though I love her country albums, I love her pop albums with all my heart. reputation was no different for me. I think it was cool because we got to see a different side of Taylor, what she was feeling and what she was going through while she disappeared for a while after all the drama in her life unfolded. 

And, also, yeah, the songs were pretty awesome. 

But, I think it's the song, "New Year's Day" that really tied it all together for me. It's the last song on the album, and after 14 almost explosive songs, this one finishes with just piano and vocals, and it's reminiscent of her songs off of her old album Speak Now (which is my personal favorite.)

I think it just hits home for me. It always has, and now more than ever. 

I'm a sentimental person. I live for memories. I have them all written away in my mind, in journals, pictures painted so I can go back and remember them at any time. Every emotion I feel, it's multiplied about a thousand times. Sadness, joy, fear, anger, it's all so intense. I hold on to objects that have even the slightest bit of sentimental value. I hold on to people. I hold on so tightly to people that it physically tears me apart inside to let them go, no matter what they might have done to me in the past. 

And I don't ever want to see an end to things. So I like to imagine there's no end, that things go on forever, so I enjoy each day and each moment as if it would always be this good. Even when it's not. I embrace the beautiful. I live for the memories.

So, her line, "don't read the last page," is just one of the many that hit home. Because if life was a book, I don't want to read the last page. If life ends beautifully, if everything in life works out the way I want it to, I don't want to know it yet. I don't want to set amazing expectations for my life because only God has control of how it's going to go. I want to be surprised when something great happens. I don't want to be disappointed because it wasn't as great as I thought it would be. 

And, on the other hand, if something terrible is going to happen, I don't want to know either. I don't want to live in fear, I want to embrace what I have now, and be happy in the moment that I'm in. 

Then there's the verses of the song. Where she describes her and her lover, in the back of the car, driving home after a New Years' Eve party, which they had stayed after to clean up. And she says, "I'll be there if you're the toast of the town, or if you strike out and you're crawling home." 

Whoever her boyfriend was at this time (I don't keep track, I just listen to her music), stayed with her even after her party to clean up. All the broken bottles, glitter on the floor, melted candles, all the messy stuff all while they were hungover and tired. And she tells him she'd do the same. That she'd stay with him and stick with him through the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. 

She wants both the sparkling midnight kiss and the roaring party with him, and the time they spend doing plain, messy things they don't want to do, like cleaning up.

She wants it all. She promises to stay through everything, because she wants all of him, and he does the same. 

I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that's what I want. Someone that's going to stick with me even when we're sad, when we're scared, when we're angry. Someone who is willing to keep up with me, and my pace of life, even when things get crazy, and not pull away out of fear. 

"Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere," she pleads. 

That line hurts me.

Because there are so many people in my life who have vanished out of it like ghosts, and the thought of them haunt me like ghosts just the same. 

And I see that they have just plainly cut me out of theirs. Cropping me out of pictures, deleting me off of every page, erasing me from their memories like I was never even there. And then suddenly, it's like years of our lives together never happened for them, as if I never existed, and it blows my mind how they can just erase things like that, because for me, it's all so real, right there in my mind. I remember it all too well, and I can see it vividly in my mind like it was just yesterday.

For them, it's like they never knew me. 

But now I see new things they post, and it's almost like they're the strangers now. They look the same, but they all act so differently than they did when I knew them. 

They're all a thousand worlds away from me.

It's funny, though, how I can hear my brother watching a video off of Snapchat, and I know it's Colt's laugh from across the room.

And then it hurts. 

Then there's the last line of the song "Hold on to the memories and they will hold on to you." 

So that's what I do. I'm slowly learning to let go of the people, of the grudges, of the emotions, of the fears that hold me back from being myself and accomplishing what I want to. I'm learning how to be myself, even in the midst of all the insanity going on in my life. I'm slowly healing and letting myself get better. 

And as for the memories? I don't cling to them as if they're a life preserver anymore. I hold onto them in knowing that there are beautiful times if I wait for them. And I hold onto them in the way that I know that they have shaped every part of me, as who I was, who I am, and who I will be.