I have been a Taylor Swift fan since I was a teenager, and her music helped me get through so many rough times associated with this hell of a disorder that the only tattoos I was able to convince myself to get directly relate to her music (a couple of song lyrics from RED). I have followed her career semi-religiously and am one of the Swifties who can recite who every one of her songs is about, and am a walking encyclopedia of celebrity gossip involving her (this is a special kind of hell). This is an alternate account because I do not want my real reddit associated with this post and the other Swifties to think less of me or be ostracized from the community, but it has been something I need to get off my chest.

I think Taylor Swift, the world's most successful musician of the past twenty years, is one of us. 

Swift claims "Blank Space" is a tongue-in-cheek response to the media's portrayal of her in the years leading up to 1989's release, but this is most likely a carefully crafted PR response to prevent more serious questions from being asked about her personal life. The song describes, with pinpoint precision, what it's like to live with Borderline Personality Disorder and the effect it has on romantic relationships. 

It is highly unlikely for Taylor Swift, who is known to write songs only about herself and her past relationships, to break away from this formulaic approach to her records, and randomly create a fictional persona just for one song. It is also highly unlikely that when creating a character that she just made up on a whim one day in her head, for this character to tick every last box in regards to displaying symptoms of a very serious mental illness that affects a very small portion of the population.

The song is structured in a way that flip-flops between infatuation and splitting, with the first verse portraying Swift as infatuated with a new man, and the second verse hell-bent on ruining his life. This is something we experience; relationships are pretty short and very intense, with the initial stages being akin to a middle school crush that has kinda-sorta gotten out of control, before a switch flips and it's... quite the opposite lol. There is no way Swift, who admittedly has a very limited repertoire of topics she writes about, suddenly had the creativity and insight to write a character with the exact same symptoms of a very specific mental illness unless she had experienced this herself

The breakdown "don't say I didn't warn you"; this is just describing oversharing. When I was in a really bad state there were some guys I got involved with where I'd basically tell my entire life story to them, including the anger issues I was trying to work on in therapy. I jokingly described to one of my ex's (get ready for this cringe) that I could turn into a "fiery ball of rage" when provoked... and then did so three months later when I smashed his coffee table. Again, there's no way Taylor could coincidentally write about oversharing without having been in our shoes. This is something I've had to work on in therapy and I'm going to guess a large percentage of the population doesn't deal with? So how else would she know that this is a thing?

"Find out what you want, be that girl for a month", well that's mirroring. "I get drunk on jealousy," creeping an ex's ex-girlfriend's facebook to the point where I've gone to work on no sleep. "But you'll come back each time you leave", one particular ex of mine, we've been on and off again for five years and it's always him calling after I've screamed at him to leave me alone. No way Taylor could have fluked into writing any of this unless she had firsthand experience.

But, okay, let's give her the benefit of the doubt, and Taylor Swift is the world's greatest songwriter, who can put herself in anyone's shoes and shit out a massively successful pop song that just also happens to perfectly describe living with a disorder that only affects around 2% of the population and is totally not autobiographical. Let's say this is all a coincidence. 

Well, I want you to take a look at some other songs.

* **I Almost Do**: This is a song about sitting around, contemplating calling an ex-boyfriend over and over again to the point where it consumes you. Hi. I've done this. *"It takes everything in me not to call you"* is an understatement.
* **Stay, Stay, Stay**: This is about fearing abandonment, as the song describes a fight where Taylor throws her phone at her boyfriend, then begs him not to leave. This is really not healthy and I spent a few DBT sessions going over this exact behavior.
* **All You Had to Do Was Stay:** Another fear of abandonment song, less direct than "Stay, Stay Stay."
* **Enchanted:** An entire song about having an FP (Adam Young of Owl City) that she never spoke directly to (they emailed a few times, but that was it).
* **Better Than Revenge:** This is my least favorite TS song because it's very manipulative and was written as a way to get the media to hate Camilla Belle. It reminds me of my own smear campaigns before I started DBT.

There's... a pattern here. Now let's take a look at some news stories.

* [Swift buys house next to boyfriend.](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/taylor-swifts-ex-conor-kennedy-nervous-when-she-bought-hyannis-house/) They had been dating a month.
* [Jake Gyllenhaal accidentally misses Swift's birthday.](https://www.nickiswift.com/61962/really-went-wrong-jake-gyllenhaal-taylor-swift/) She allegedly locks herself in the bathroom and cries all night.
* [Swift runs into Jake at an afterparty and supposedly has a meltdown.](https://dlisted.com/2015/01/13/taylor-swift-might-have-had-a-cry-filled-breakdown-over-jake-gyllenhaal-at-a-golden-globes-afterparty/) Conflicting reports on this one.

Is Taylor secretly one of us?