By Tawnya Gibson

I’ve spent the last 25 years insisting my divorce was amicable. That I was the lucky one, relatively, and escaped without injury or harm. That we simply couldn’t make it and the break was easy. Quick. Not at all messy. The paperwork was signed and stamped before the milk in the fridge reached its expiration date and far before our scant possessions had been divvied up one night while we sat cross-legged on the floor picking what was important to us.

I’ve also spent the last 25 years lying to myself and anyone else who asked.

It is rumored that the song “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” from Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights was written about her relationship with John Mayer when she was only 19 and Mayer was 32. As I sit here on my mid-life perch, I regard the details of that relationship with a mix of disbelief and horror.

I understand how easy it would be to pass self-righteous judgment and join the chorus of voices saying she should have known better. She was so young. He was so much older. But as I allow myself to remember the real and not the carefully constructed narrative I’ve weaved for more than two decades about my own relationship, my mind is illuminated by new awareness and understanding. 

I was 20 when we got married; he was nearly 27. We met in May; we married in November. In those six months of courtship, I was also dating someone else, very casually, which ended in July. Our marriage never stood a chance. 

This was typically where I’d start downplaying the facts: We were different. I was mature for 20. I could help him. I could fix him. He just needed a stable partner. I had my head together enough, someone so much older loved me. Wanted me. Needed me. When you know, you know. Who needs to slow down when things just work?

All of that could have been true. But so was the fact that our relationship was unbalanced from the start, which is something I’ve scarcely admitted to myself. He believed he was older and wiser—didn’t always need to listen to me, respect me, or hear my point of view. I remember being talked down to, but deferred because I was younger, less experienced, subconsciously buying into his perspective, growing less and less sure of my own voice, until it disappeared altogether.

In “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” Taylor sings about wishing how he’d never paid attention to her. If only he’d never looked twice, she wouldn’t have made a move and could have skipped this experience, which would be preferable to sitting with the regret that still haunts her. It may have seemed great at the time, but her pain is palpable in every line.

That lyric broke me open like nothing has before, making me confront my carefully crafted narrative of amicable divorce and correct the record with the writing of this essay.

I remember the first time I allowed myself to acknowledge I might have made a mistake. We were nine months into our marriage and nothing had gone right. I had yet to process my feelings from a previous, bad relationship and a betrayal by my best friend. I was lonely, sleeping inches from a spouse that seemed more like a stranger than the other half of a blissful newlywed couple. 

Staring at the ceiling, listening to his steady snore, I wondered what it would be like to be divorced so young. I wondered what people would say. What would I do? How could I own up to being so wrong? How could I walk away? Why did I rush into this without listening to my gut, my nerves, or my sister? 

As soon as all of these words popped into my head, I banished them for long enough to pretend like they never existed. I’d wake up every morning with the resolve to make my marriage work. I thought I had to carry on, no matter what. Validate my choices. It took me years to realize that we alone needed to experience the lessons life must teach us. And that we couldn’t stay mired in every bad decision.

Searching Taylor Swift reaction videos, you’ll find compilations of fans reacting to the line “Give me back my girlhood / it was mine first.” Each person is visibly upset, wide-eyed, and breathless while they allow the meaning to envelop them. Listening to the song for the first time, I burst into tears when that line hit. I sucked in my breath and sat with my feelings.

At first, I thought the tears were for the powerful lyrics; for a lost soul facing a reckoning of difficult choices. It didn’t take long to recognize that the tears were actually for me; for my own lost girlhood, and for the things taken from me during an ill-fated three-year marriage. That lyric broke me open like nothing has before, making me confront my carefully crafted narrative of amicable divorce and correct the record with the writing of this essay.

My Taylor-loving teen didn’t understand why this particular song was so popular when, in his estimation, there were better song choices from the new album. But he’s never been broken open in that way. As a parent, I simultaneously hope it never happens and instinctively know that it will. And as a person dusting off 25-year-old trauma in order to process my buried feelings, I have a new understanding of what my mother must have felt like watching me go through it.

Just like Taylor does in “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” I sometimes play the what-if game. I wonder what would have happened if I backed out of the wedding and changed my mind. I wonder if I would have ever met the man I married next, who has been by my side for 23 years. What if I had insisted on more time dating before jumping into my first marriage? Would I have known better to end it before it went too far? 

It’s not a game I indulge in often. It’s futile, I know. My past happened and my life is the result. Sometimes my own ghosts haunt me and my regret swells in a manner that’s impossible to ignore. But with the help of some cathartic music, I’m finding the courage to finally confront those ghosts.

Thanks, Taylor. 

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Tawnya Gibson is a freelance writer and hobby photographer who grew up in the high desert of southwest New Mexico.  She received her degree in journalism and communications from Utah State University. Her work has appeared in Burningword Lit Journal, Sky Island Journal, and New Plains Review.  You can hear her on the monthly column for Utah Public Radio entitled “She Goes On.”  She currently lives and works in the mountains of Northern Utah, but her New Mexican roots still occasionally bleed through her work.