I tend to grasp onto songs Taylor has written as they relate to things in my life. Her songs become my lifelines — the rope I cling to when I’m drowning in grief, the words that make me feel less alone in my ache.
This one though. As of now, it’s my favorite on the album. The lyrics, the beat, the melody — I can dance to it, but I can also cry. It holds both at once, which is exactly what grief feels like. That collision of movement and heartbreak, of wanting to disappear and wanting to be alive at the same time.
As a grieving mom, this song cuts right through me. Ophelia’s story ends in tragedy. She drowns, voiceless, consumed by grief. And for a long time, I thought that would be me too. That I would be swallowed whole by what I lost.
But Taylor takes that story and rewrites it. She sings about almost going under… and then not. About being pulled back from the edge. About survival.
And that’s what grief has been for me. Drowning, resurfacing, learning to breathe again. I still carry the weight of loss every single day. I still ache for what I will never have back. But I am not only my tragedy. I am still here. I am still living.
Taylor is a magician. She takes the unbearable, the unspeakable, and turns it into something you can hold in your hands. A melody. A lyric. A lifeline. She doesn’t erase the grief. She transforms it into something that can live alongside you. Into proof that even after devastation, love can arrive again, in a different form.
That’s why this song is liberation. Because it gives voice to what it means to live after the unthinkable. To be shattered and still find a way to keep moving. To take the fate of Ophelia and rewrite it into your own.
This might sound like a feel-good song, and it is. But look at what it took to get here. The work. The tears that soaked through silk sheets until dawn. The kind of sobbing that leaves you gasping on a midnight drive. The sleepless nights. The shaking hands. The heaving over the toilet because grief lives in the body. Oh my god, how it lives in the body. The silencing of the noise. The breaking of the chains. The splitting open of your own heart just to be free. The staying when the pain was intolerable. The leaving when it nearly destroyed you. The betrayals. The forgiveness that felt like bleeding. The walking away from what you thought was forever. The following of your heart even when it dragged you through fire.
That’s what makes this song feel like resurrection. Because the light it holds wasn’t handed to her. Or to me. It was clawed from the dark. It’s the kind of light that flickers after everything has burned down. The kind that doesn’t promise happiness but demands truth. It’s the proof that even after the wreckage, the grief, the loss, the breaking and the rebuilding, you can still rise. You can still move. You can still love, even with ashes in your lungs.
And then, FUCK. Look at this love she has found.
This love. This is her pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And knowing this just elates me. She is so deserving of this kind of happiness. Of being worshiped and seen for who she truly is. Of being adored in the way she has always deserved. And knowing she has found someone she is just as crazy about — that undoes me. It’s everything.
Hi. I’m also over on Substack. I’m trying to be consistent about writing over there. I love you.
substack.com/@mamamaya4
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