#especially when it's an obscure old book that i myself ALSO love and they latched onto the same character as me

[katya-goncharov]

i love it when authors straight-up admit that their characters were inspired by a random side character from some obscure old book they loved as a kid, because it's like, bestie, me too!!

[nicollekidman]

dude ...I used to hope Taylor swift was bi / a fellow lesbian out of optimism lol, because i admire her work and when seen through the lens of a closeted woman all the secrecy metaphors make a lot of sense.... it would be so fascinating and heartbreaking if it were true! but I’m getting too old for conspiracies . I dunno. What keeps you believing?

okay so! i’m gonna preface this with a few things: it’s gonna be long bc i haven’t talked about taylor in a long time and i’m having Feelings and Thoughts, and my journey with miss swift is necessarily very personal and i won’t pretend otherwise! 

firstly: i don’t think i need to “keep” being convinced. for me it’s not an ongoing search for evidence - i believe that her songs speak for themselves and all the personal clues that might or might not be reaches are just icing on the cake. 

i grew up in a country music-listening household and loved tim mcgraw when it came out as a single when i was in middle school! i was pretty much hooked on her songwriting for then on, and her albums always seemed to come out at pivotal points of my life. “we are never ever getting back together” was the soundtrack to my move to university in 2012 and 1989 coincided with my junior year which was revelatory in that it was the time when i was really coming to terms with being gay. my journey with taylor dovetails super closely with my own personal journey, in ways that i think are familiar to a lot of people. as a young girl i latched onto her storytelling and her confessional voice and then as i began to realize i was experiencing attraction to women, i found a lot of comfort and understanding in her lyrics. this happened for me really late in life compared to some people! i was 21/22 when i first identified as bi, and it wasn’t until later i began to think it was possible i was a lesbian. my experience with unlearning compulsory heterosexuality, examining my own emotional interior life, and thinking about why it took me over 20 years to even consider i could possibly love women made me look at taylor in a new light. 

i think everything i need is in her music. that’s where taylor is at her most uninhibited and truthful. i think when you look at the themes/relationships she’s been writing about since she was a teen, you can see that as long as you’re willing to suspend the presupposition that everyone is straight until proven otherwise, she writes in a way that resonates with gay women for a reason!! as a younger artist she relied on a lot of fairy tale imagery, perspective shifts, and idealized stories of love. especially when she talks about those songs.... (and she still does this), she’s always connecting them to movies, to books, to things outside of her own experience. and when she is clearly talking about herself, she takes second-person pov or otherwise spins narratives that are full of yearning and a hope for a perfect fairytale in the future. i think that mode of almost.... daydreaming about an idealized version of a love story hits close to home for us! and then her later albums are MUCH louder, with themes (as people have pointed out over and over again) that just don’t hold much weight if you view them through the lense of a very famous wealthy woman writing about equally well-to-do white men. when i hear songs about forbidden love, itching to hold the hand of your beloved in public, crying over seeing heroes die alone, spinning a portrait of a life in the future where she can share her home and her love with all her friends.... when she writes so acutely of pain and agony associated with living in a fishbowl and enduring long periods of being undercover and secretive with only stolen moments of peace/beauty.... EVERYTHING i need to believe she’s not straight is in her songwriting, which i view through the personal lense of being a gay woman myself. 

everything else... the masterposts and the powerpoints and the “clues”... those are helpful in terms of opening your eyes to the concept of PR relationships and recognizing that just because you’re fed something by a celebrity doesn’t mean it’s real, but it’s not the base of my feelings about taylor. i will say though, i originally was convinced that taylor was a lesbian because of swiftgron, what we know about the two of them publicly without any reaching was enough for me to recontexualize lyrics i thought i knew the story behind, and to start thinking about her whole body of work differently. i will say also that i was never one to follow along with taylor’s personal life until this point, i had a passing awarness of the men she was supposed to have dated but i didn’t give it much thought. however, i saw swiftgron stuff right as i was recognizing i was gay myself, so it opened my eyes and almost... gave me permission to understand that het is not the default!! then of course i’ve been active since 1989 and watced kaylor unfold in real time. it is still my belief that during the glass closeting era, they were obvious because the kaylor rumors benefited both of them and laid the groundwork for a coming out that was derailed by kissgate. everything afterwards..... well... 

i am not a fan of thinking of this as a “conspiracy” i think that that idea is perpetuated by homophobes that think that everyone is straight and assuming otherwise is somehow an insult or a gross invasion of privacy. i think the vast majority of people who think taylor is gay are doing what all swifties do, which is analyze her music with a layer of projection and personal identification. however i do think that taylor encouraged the speculation for a while, and fully intended to leverage existing kaylor fans into a solid base when she came out (which i do think was planned post-yntcd but was shelved). i think there is PLENTY to look at in her public image and personal posts/behavior that would lead to a person who is willing to look at things objectively to come to the conclusion that she wasn’t straight. she has absolute control over her image and there were too many public outings and “coincidences” to be an accident. 

HOWEVER i think that people who run blogs or talk about her gayness based on obscure clues and overanalyzing every micro-movement are missing the point and often too dedicated to their own placement as “Big Blogs” or receivers of “intel”, in a way that is mostly embarassing and myopic. i have always always been of the general opinion that we will never know every detail of taylor’s relationships, nor are we entitled to that information. she is a breathing, thinking, complicated woman with a HUGE public life and an equally huge private life that belongs to her alone. 

building a public platform based on smoke signals and secret messages and inside sources has never been something i’m at all interested in, and is largely unnecessary. her story is all right there in the lyrics of her songs, and the things she shares with us publicly. i do think there have been hints/clues in the past and they’re very fun to analyze (which she encouraged!!), but much of the digging/reaching is unnecessary! we will never know for sure until she comes out herself, but i believe that her whole body of work and her messaging speaks for itself. the only thing keeping people from more widely accepting this is truly the assumption that being heterosexual is a default, and you have to Prove otherwise with a preponderance of evidence. i readily admit all of this is influenced by my experiences and emotions as a gay woman, but everyone projects onto taylor swift. 

i’m fully convinced based on her music + her past public relationships with women like dianna and karlie + her intentional hints that she is a lesbian. however i am not interested in inventing “evidence” because she’s not on trial! and i’m happy to wait for her to come out, which i absolutely think was planned for lover era and then abandoned for various reasons!! 

[isoisolated]

I have ADHD and it's not fun

29/12 edit: coming back to this post, I just wanted to add that at the time of writing, my adhd was unmedicated. Thought this might be good thing to note. 

My friend Ondrej kept sending me articles and texts posts written by other adhd people (mostly adult males) that it finally pushed me to write my own, because even though I could relate to some minor and major parts, something always felt a bit of and also because ADHD is a condition that's been heavily ignored by medical professionals not only in adults, but especially in adult women, which is a group I sort of represent myself. 

I could talk about this for ages, my therapist frequently tells me that I have this gift of intense self-analysis and immense passion to get it all sorted out once for all. I guess it's another way of saying I'm so hyperaware of my own existence and my brain simply latches onto it and constantly tries to solve its own problems. 

If you do not care about my own personal history, just skip to second headline.

I was clueless for the first 20 years of my existence

Now, ADHD isn't the only thing that's been making me feel almost alien, I dare to say that my puberty years were mostly about developing and internalising bit of trauma and processes that do no good in later life. 

I love music. And I mean I truly endlessly unconditionally love music. Being a daughter of music composer, I was 6 when I first asked my dad to show me where to press record in Logic Pro and told him to leave me alone while I recorded my first song. It was called Autumn is here and it sounded like something made by 6 years old. 

I remember we were attending castings for TV shows or commercials and later I was told that it was me who initiated such trips and that I always wanted to be a part of such things. I don't remember initiating such things but I remember for sure that I was very shy and uncomfortable when I was supposed to show off. 

I remember I was supposed to take piano lessons. And I was so baffled that I had to follow the book and play what's in the book, instead of playing thing I wanted. I think I told my parents after few lessons that I do not like it and was dropped outta it. This became a pattern, if I recall correctly. 

But that's nothing out of ordinary, kids are harder to get focused and entertained. I remember two moments from elementary school where I was told by my classmates that I'm acting like I have ADHD and it got me real mad every time, because in my head ADHD looked like not paying attention in class, being body hyper and overall just annoying. 

I could find a proof that I made myself first to-do list when I was 14. Since 14 I felt like I need more self control and self regulation, that I need to fit myself more into ambitions I had and have and in order to do that, I started making to-do lists with ambiguous tasks such as “work more on music” and “work-out”. It was also in during my great isolation era, I had no real life friends but one that I was seeing occasionally, I wasn't going out, I came from school on Friday afternoon and left my room on Monday morning. I was making friends online since I was 11 and lived mostly online. 

At that time I also started figuring out what was wrong with me. Since ever I always felt a bit “off” compared to my peers, I always felt weird (and was told that thousand of times in my life), I always felt like I was thinking about things a bit differently and my humour was different and my hobbies were seen obscure by my classmates (even though they weren't obscure at all). I felt alone for most of my growing up and feelings of complete loneliness and detachment haunt me to this day, making me spiral. 

I thought I might suffer from bipolar disorder, because I had high energy episodes and my emotions were so intense. I was crying almost everyday for both external and internal reasons, my head sometimes felt like too much and I found temporary peace in self-help books and esotericism. 

I was around 17-18 when I realised all of this is bullshit and that no book can make me do things that I wanna do. I'd spent hours, days and months thinking about doing things, being crippled by this weird force that hold my body down, unable to do anything, no matter how much I wanted it. I'd beat myself up for it, thinking I was just so damn lazy and stupid and pretentious. I wanna be a popstar, a successful musician, I have to do all these things and if not, I'm gonna fail so much and my life will lose its meaning. 

When I was 17, I released my first EP and for some reason, it found some attention and success, if we might call it that. Suddenly I felt on the right path, I was seen as a musician and also very young one. Even though I still was sad almost every day or had intense sadness episodes that could last for a week, it felt right and I couldn't wait to finish high school and become a full time musician. 

I'd produce music in unplanned episodes of total focus, where I would sit and do things for hours straight, without eating. My most favorite songs were made during 6-8 hour sessions and it felt amazing. I couldn't bring myself to produce music if I hadn't the right vibe or idea for it. 

It was around that time this woman texted me, saying she wants to be my manager and that she really likes my music. It felt so unreal but here I am, with my own professional manager, on my way to be the most amazing music person.

I'd crush on people (and mostly boys and men) constantly, it was also very episodic, could last for days to month where I'd had nothing on my mind but them, drowned in daydreaming and just imagining things and also letting them know all of that. It was magical but it was fleeting. It still is. But it is the greatest inspiration, where I feel so much emotions it makes me see things and then I can transform them into music. 

But there was still something wrong with me, I was very emotional, still struggling with making my routines work, I'd come up with new plans and schedules every week just to fail them the day after. It was exhausting and I saw nothing alike in my world too, I was alone and my experience was just not enough will power. 

I could get mad so easily, I'd clench my fists and was so close to punching someone and when I hated someone I hated them with immense passion and spent hours just imagining myself confronting them. I was so mad all the time on background too and even slightest thing would put me in classic rage mode.

I have problems remembering dates and names, I'm bad at remembering people's faces, I'm bad at learning things by myself even though I have interest in them. I'm bad at making routine for myself and actually following it.

I finished high school and planned to go study abroad but it turned out it isn't what I want so I came back and started looking for a job. Around that time I met my now best friend and thanks to him I actually started thinking even harder what might be wrong with me, so I looked up ADHD. And didn't believe that at all. I wasn't like this, was I? 

Then, the summer came and I met my friend (and also a fan) while being out for a beer. We chatted, had a great time and then told me I kinda am like a person with ADD. I was confused because I didn't recall what that does mean, later I remembered it's another (and outdated) term for ADHD, but it's the “quiet type”, where the hype happens mostly inside and doesn't manifest outside that much. So I started researching once again, because I trusted him and it was that one push I needed.

It's been year since that moment and it took me months to accept that I might suffer from ADHD and to this day I still have feelings of impostor syndrome, making it all harder for myself just like that, to be more interesting for myself. I still yet have to accept this. 

I was transitioning into adulthood and yet had actual emotional breakdowns, I was crying and my heart was aching and I couldn't bring myself to do things I want, to learn more about music production, to learn how to sing better, to learn my favorite k-pop choreos, to work-out, to embody my own vision of who I want to be. With music, I am my own boss and it's the worst.

Covid-19 hit our country and here came the first lockdown. It pushed me over the edge and I felt like I was losing all of my friends, I felt those feelings of loneliness and weirdness again, I felt like nobody knows what's wrong because I don't have it as bad as others, I was hurting so much my body was shaking and twisting. I decided to try medication, even though I told my psychiatrist I don't want to, I just felt like I cannot be like this anymore, it's too much pain and no matter how much I try, I can't make it better, I can't make it work. 

I started taking Strattera and after month or two, I saw it working. A bit, I could focus better and bring myself to do things more and more frequently, and if I had these weird emotional meltdowns, they weren't as intense as before. This serves me as ultimate proof that I am not making this up, because if I were, the medication wouldn't work and make me feel better, right? 

So, what am I doing now? 

I'm still a huge mess and I cannot see myself in a better light. Even though I have job that I perform at at stable rate, even though I have just a little problem cooking for myself, even though I have no troubles falling asleep, even though I can enjoy things greatly when those high energy waves hit me. 

I'm tired of myself, I'm tired of myself not being able to do anything again. I ignore my manager because I already know I have nothing else to say than “I cannot bring myself to do things and you know that, I'm sorry for being a constant failure.” When people compliment me, I thank them but deep inside I don't accept it. 

I have unreleased and WIP songs I can see never being released, ever. When I listen to music from my favorite artists, I can also feel the pain from the fact that I'm not like them and that I probably won't ever be, because my brain sabotages me every damn time. 

From the very moment I wake up to the very moment I fall asleep, there's music playing in my head. I don't choose what's playing, sometimes it's song I don't even like and yet it's stuck on loop. I talk with my therapist in my head, I'm having weird flashbacks in my head to my memories, I'm having “you should do X right now” and “why aren't you doing Y” stuck on loop too. This all is happening at once, every moment I'm awake, even when I'm talking with people. It's exhausting. 

I'm bored most of the time, I have interesting books in my bookshelf and still cannot read them because I have to reread paragraphs in order to actually understand them. And even then, I find my mind wandering again. I have problems with long texts and long tutorials.

I get frustrated easily, my head is overflowing with ideas I can't act on. I'm living in weird worlds I made up for myself, and then reality hits me. 

I had my first depressive episode few months ago. I felt like nothing matters, that I don't matter, I felt nothing and emptiness, I crawled up in bed and was mindlessly watching youtube videos. I didn't want to eat or drink, I wanted to not exist at all. That episode passed but it was my first encounter with actual depressive state and I know I can slip into it more easily now, it simply developed along the way, after 21 years without acknowledging that I have problems and I struggle. 

People don't understand the struggle, when talking to them about my problems, it's like talking to an automated assistant, coming up with phrases like “Did you try yoga?” “everyone struggles sometime” “you cannot accomplish everything”. They say they wanna listen and help until they don't. 

I have a mental graveyard for ideas I won't ever finish, no matter how good they are, because my brain won't let me. Proper medication would help, therapy also helps but I can't talk myself out of actual executive dysfunction. 

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, our brains are literally underdeveloped in some areas and wired differently. Our emotions lack regulation normal people have and our motivation is fragile. This can't be changed with yoga, this cannot be solved by trying more. Not to even mention, capitalist society is especially damaging to neurodivergent people (and not only them, of course). 

While on this journey, I am still meeting more and more people having same struggles like me, finding people who understand you is the best thing to battle impostor syndrome. Sometimes I can't help them and sometimes they can't help me, but it's okay, because we know we understand each other and if I wanna complain and vent, we can do so without having to explain this condition over and over. 

And I hope that someone finds this relatable too, because as a woman I know my group isn't represented enough. We are not children, nor adult males, we need more attention and more support, from both healthcare system and each other. 

While doing this, I hope to get myself proper medication and continue doing what I love the most - music. I don't love anything else more than that. I hope to get rid of “all or nothing” mindset, I hope to be more consistent, I hope my music will reach its listeners and fans. I still have enough time, I think, even though my sense of time is neurologically altered.