#the commentary i am seeing surrounding this album is like. very actively upsetting me.

[lunar-years]

this narrative going around that she broke up with Joe because he was "too depressed" is sooo reductive and actively gross when it's used to paint her as this person who's dismissive of a partner's mental health struggles. particularly when the entire album is dripping with the crushing reality and weight of her own mental health struggles and turmoil! and confessing to her own mental collapse as a major propeller of the breakup! i don't typically like to comment much on her personal relationships and infer what occurred in them, but to me it has been made pretty explicitly clear by Taylor herself that they were engaged in a catastrophically unhealthy cycle of depression olympics in which both partners were deeply struggling and pulling each other down further and further into that hole, basically daring the other to sink them lower. that's what she's mad about (and he'd allowed to be mad, too, btw). she completely did understand what he was going through because she was going through it too, albeit in a different shade. and i think that's part of what made it so damn hard for her to leave. but you can understand someone's depression and care about their struggles without having to dismiss when they've hurt you because of it. Their mental health issues became a method of mutual manipulation until they eventually imploded. two graves one gun. she's allowed to be upset about that.