“Dear John”: The true Taylor Swift break-up anthem for people dealing with the backlash from a toxic relationship. Around one year ago, I started dating my first boyfriend. Needless to say, we broke up six months later after a painful and exhausting relationship. While the break-up and final days were hard enough, the thing that people always forget to warn you about is the aftershocks. The best comparison I can make is to an earthquake. For months, pressure builds under the surface, and as much as the tectonic plates want to move, they’re stuck. They need an extreme release of pressure in order to realign themselves. It’s not just the initial burst you need to watch out for, but the aftershocks that can come for hours after the earthquake happens. In general, aftershocks are most severe and happen more frequently in the hours and days that follow an earthquake. Larger earthquakes tend to produce larger aftershocks. All of this is to say that while a breakup is painful, there will be days, hours, and moments where the aftershocks will bring you to your knees.
These aftershocks can come up in a variety of ways: thinking destructively, listening to a song you played in your relationship, looking through old photos, or any small act that brings you to those bad times. If we listen to Taylor in “Dear John”, aftershocks happen whenever she picks up the phone and remembers being nervous about which version of John might be on the other line. They happen when her friends and mom warned her about losing her mind, or that she should have run away sooner. However, she turns it around at the end. “But I took your matches before fire could catch me / So don’t look now / I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town” she sings, showing that as bad as it was in the moment, she realizes how much she was hurting and how much farther she has come now that she’s out of the relationship.
It took me a while to realize that my mind was so clouded I couldn’t even find who I was six months prior. I was so angry with myself for not seeing the red flags sooner. I was so upset that I couldn’t find myself, and I was so relieved. I would never have to go through another argument, I wouldn’t be mocked by his friends, and I wouldn’t be belittled by someone who I thought I was supposed to love. It was during this time that my friend told me about her best method to get over her past relationships.
The first step is to stop and cry, scream, breathe, be silent, be happy, or be anything else that you could possibly feel.
The next step, usually between 24-48 hours, you write a letter to your ex and get everything on the table. Everything that you didn’t say, like intrusive thoughts or bad memories. Then you put the letter in an envelope and put it away somewhere you can still get to it.
Then after a month goes by (it helps to put a reminder on your phone), you write another letter. The dust has settled and you can think more clearly. It can be whatever you want and however long it takes to get out everything that you have been thinking about for a month.
The final step is the most important step. After you finish your one-month letter, you need to read the first letter without judgment. In the month that I had between letters, I started to forgive myself for the things that were out of my control, and I let myself mature out of that other version of me. Then you BURN both letters (or do anything to destroy them). Let those emotions and sacrifices just go.For a month, those aftershocks will hurt, and they may bring up some scars, but the pain doesn’t last forever. One day, you will be the fireworks rising up against their “sad empty town,” and the earthquake won’t seem so devastating. If going through my relationship, breakup, and aftershocks taught me anything, it’s that hurt people only hurt people. You don’t deserve to be treated how you were treated and you are so much better off now. If you need to remember, just look at some fireworks.