Note: I wrote this in the month of September, 2025. Since then, I have rekindled with my friends. I am just now publishing in 2026. Funny how life works.

When I was twelve I met my friend group at our small town middle school. Me, a chubby, shy, and ugly duckling approached this girl during gym and tried to make conversation. She had a rainbow pin on her backpack, and so I pointed at my bracelet, showing that I too loved rainbows. We became inseparable after that. Think sleepovers, gossip in the corner of the cafeteria, late night phone calls and texting, shoulder hugs to mend broken hearts, and proclamations of lifelong closeness, forever and forever. Eventually our friend group extended to two more girls, three boys, and from there a clique was formed. Seventh grade blues turned to eighth grade anxieties, and then those both muddled into melancholy and dramatics leading to ninth grade and so forth.

High school is the age in which people search for souls and for love. It’s the four years that can even make or break your future. I remember being hopeful and happy starting those years. I convinced myself that middle school me would magically vanish and in a cocoon of rebirth I’d become a skinny socialite who’d have the ultimate romance. Of course, my “plan” had failed; I was still overweight, I had a fallout with one of my best friends, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk to new people if I tried.

Sophomore year, my best friend — the rainbow girl — got a boyfriend, who passed on his brother’s information to me, the girl of diamonds. We went to a school dance (20’s themed!) and after that night we became boyfriend and girlfriend. I was elated! Finally, a boy picked me! A fat girl who, despite losing thirty pounds the previous summer, was still forty pounds overweight. Everything was perfect and sparkly and amazing. That is, until the boy broke up with me and ghosted me after one fight.

You may be wondering what the hell this is has to do with Taylor Swift and grief? Well, here’s the kicker. After the boy left me, my world crashed and burned. Suddenly life felt gray and nothing mattered but for someone to finally love. I began centering my entire life around that boy. The pain was all I could talk about to my friends. They got sick of me. The more I pushed their buttons, the less they wanted to be around me. I picked fights because of the avoidance I felt from everyone around me. I became more angry and aggressive all the time. I then wondered why no one wanted to hang out with me. Every time I would try to vent in the group chat, no one cared. My best friends were sick of me and decided to distance themselves because of my constant negativity. All it did was make me crash out even more. One best friend — I’ll call her Pin Drop — started hanging out with fellow classmates. I got jealous and toxic.

After graduation, I ended up alone. The pandemic swooped in and took over my entire being. I didn’t see my friends. Our connection purely recited through text messages and faceless conversations. The boy that broke up with me sophomore year suddenly swept back into my life yet left again. I stayed toxic. Tired. Exhausted. Constantly lashing out at everyone when perceived betrayal hit me in the fragile part of my heart.

Through the years of hearing “it’s not high school anymore” and “I’m busy, you’re not entitled to my attention” and “you’re like my sisters,” my self cultivated a deep level of shame and worthlessness. I internalized everything said to me. I attempted to change. I did nothing but decide to mold myself to their liking in order to gain back their love and affection. I stopped being so needy. The pleas for attention lowered in intensity. And regardless of that, my self continued to be ignored and avoided. I didn’t understand why. I still don’t. The original issue was that I was too much, right? I wanted too much attention. I got mad at everything. I assumed the worst of them. But even after I stopped — nothing changed still.

And yet, I’d die a liar if I said that when I got an allergic reaction and ended up in the hospital, and Rainbow Girl didn’t even call me hectic and ready to jump at my side, didn’t hurt me to the core. And worse? When I got hurt over that, she somehow managed to squeeze the message I don’t care and you’re not a priority to me into her paragraphs.

Last year, I saw Rainbow Girl for the last time. After that, I did nothing but constantly try and set up a double date between her and her boyfriend with me and mine. She told me that she would have to see, that she had money problems. Well, she never got back to me on that. I thought she’d care. I thought she’d be happy that I was someone I felt made me happy, and wanted to meet him.

I received no response. Funny thing is, is that weeks after that I saw her at a very expensive event with old friends from high school.

Truth is, I don’t remember the last time we texted. I think she left me on read. Or I left her on read. I don’t know. Either way, she practically ghosted me. It wasn’t until I saw the way my ex boyfriend’s friends would come to his side at an instant that I realized that all these years of being told I am just busy and I do care it’s just that I have other things going on, was all a farce. Excuses. Easy ways to deflect responsibility.

All the while, I was depressed. I was sad. I had no one. Did I not deserve to have someone? Yet I was treated as a ghost. As if it was a universal rule to never be there for a supposed friend and sister. As if my expectations were unrealistic. Unhealthy. Mentally ill. Irrational.

So now I bring you to 2025:

I cut ties with everyone. I told Pin Drop that I couldn’t deal with her avoidance anymore. How she refused to get close to me due to fear of trusting me, as if I hadn’t known her for over a decade. It cut me deep, especially since the bullets were stretched over for years on end. I never texted Rainbow Girl ever again. I unfollowed her everywhere. I haven’t’ spoken to anyone since.

I talk to coworkers, but after work I am nothing less or more than alone. I feel heavy grief weighing down on my eyes every single damn day. Memories and pain replay in my mind all the time, torturing me until I contemplate suicide. The only things that help me mourn my one-sided friendships — and the unfortunate reality that I am truly alone and have been for years — is spinning my lavender Midnights vinyl. My clandestine meetings pressing of Folklore as well.

Listening to Taylor helps me process my grief. The lyrics I used to attribute to situationships, the boy, and trash men who used me for sex, I now attach portraits of those I used to call my sisters. My loneliness and lack of feeling seen is put into words every time I listen to her songs. This is why I am writing this post. People think all of her music is about exes, but I say that it is about grief. That grief can extend outside of romance, and it has for me. Deeply.

Here are some notable mentions:

Maroon

Like you were my closest friend

It’s time to go

When the words of a sister, come back in whispers, that proves she was not