“Come one, come all. It’s happening again.”

“Come one, come all. It’s happening again.”

Taylor Swift revealed these unheard lyrics to us today via Times Square billboard. All week, she’s been giving us a peek into her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, and in doing so, letting us in on the secrets of her last relationship’s demise. 

As soon as I read, “It’s happening again,” I felt like my own words were being displayed to me, 20 feet tall, just blocks away from where I live. 

I’ve said those words dozens of times, always with my heartbeat loud in my ears, tears ready to spill over. It’s that feeling when you’re on a roller coaster and your pulse is racing as you near the top. The moment I know “it’s happening again” isn’t quite there, but when I’m a few inches over the hump, looking down at the impending drop. 

It’s the moment where I can sense that the guy I’m dating is pulling back. Or he’s stopped responding to my texts. Or I haven’t heard from him in days, and I think, “It’s happening again.” He’s lost interest and forgot to let me know. I forgot to suppress my feelings. I got attached. I imagined what it would be like to go on more than five dates with someone I liked. And now I’m being ghosted, and not for the first or second or third time.

This is the point in the story where I deliver the definition of insanity so you know that I know it. But no matter how much I change my approach, it happens again. 

I wonder sometimes about Taylor. What’s it like for your heartbreak to become a headline? In my small world, it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to have to tell the friend group and the few coworkers who know about the man of the moment that, well, I was ghosted. No, he never responded to my last texts. I play it off with an eye roll and a rehearsed, “Onto the next,” but inside I want to die. 

What do you imagine Taylor’s feeling as she writes the words “it’s happening again”? We’ll soon find out, but I can imagine that after a decade of letting the world witness her heart break and get pieced back together, she finally felt relief when the last time felt different, like it was going to last. 

“It’s happening again.” I bet she said it to herself reluctantly, like she had it pulled out of her by force. Just like me, each time I think I’m getting close to finding my one, and I have to admit that I was wrong. 

But she also says, “Come one, come all.” And that’s not like me, because this isn’t her little life and the 20-mile radius where she spends her days. This is the world’s circus, and she’s the main event we’ve all paid lots of money for, to watch her sing and dance and relive her most vulnerable moments for all to see. 

I wonder sometimes whether Taylor knows this is the price she has paid to live out her dreams, knowing deep down that the greatest muse is a broken heart. And then I wonder if that’s why I’ve largely refused to put pen to paper about my romantic pitfalls. I hesitate to feed the machine, but in return I have no love and no art to show for it.

When we meet someone new, someone promising, we hope we won’t have to do the work of nursing a broken heart back to health. But then it happens again. And then we wonder how much more heartbreak we’ll have to endure before we earn the chance at love.

Maybe it’s our twin Cancer moons or our shared penchant for the written word, but there’s something comforting about knowing Taylor gets back on the roller coaster every time. Perhaps she lets herself bask in self-pity for a while — I know I do — but then the process restarts. And maybe this time “it’s happening again” will take on a different meaning.