The first time I heard a Taylor Swift song I was almost twelve, over the next few years her career completely blew up, and my little pre-tween life absolutely imploded.

I was in middle school, living with secretly divorced parents, while secretly crushing on a girl and had just discovered a vast array of very adult emotions, including depression and shame, so, when the completely romantic, country fairytale of an album that was Taylor Swift came out; I was immediately hooked into her straight white romantic fantasy.

I knew every word of the four or five singles I was granted parental permission to buy, which I also still own (thanks dad), sang them all the time, played them on repeat until my play count hit the thousands and eventually got the whole family hooked.

Her songs spoke to me in a time where I didn’t really talk to too many people about the emotions I was having, ones that I felt were wrong to have in the first place. In a time when I couldn’t date the people I wanted,

Swift gave me hope in a hetero world

Tim McGraw made me think I just lived in the wrong part of the country, Teardrops on My Guitar made me think he just wasn’t paying attention, Our Song made me long for something I didn’t have like I’d never done before and Picture to Burn showed me maybe none of it was worth it at all, on top of that it made fun of someone for maybe being gay; a joke someone I knew found to be hilarious, we listened to that one a lot.

Then, when i was fourteen, Fearless came out and with it; Love story and with that;

the video

A beautifully designed teenage dream of a hetero fairytale that was pretty enough to convince me I could just ignore the other side of my blossoming sexuality.

So I suppressed and hit next on my ever growing playlist of Taylor Swift songs

and on came You Belong With Me.

Suddenly, I was just the girl in the bleachers, that was the issue. There was nothing wrong with me, he just wanted the girl in a short skirt, that was cool. Ok. like he was wrong, Taylor said so but that was ok. He just didn’t see

With the new found belief that the right guy would just be looking at the wrong girl, I went to high school, in a different city, with a different parent and I dated boys.

Then I moved again and dated another one who, after recently learning the statue of limitation laws have changed in California I’m half convinced to name drop, then I dated another one, and another one.

It’s not Taylor’s fault that I grew up during the tail end of the time where it was ok to have a gay friend

but that you were supposed to get married and the LGBT community couldn’t do that yet.

It’s not her fault that the music she wrote as a child affected me during my formative years.

She wrote with the times and grew as they did, this morning she dropped a music video featuring more members of the LGBTQ community than the rainbow itself. Today kids everywhere will sing along to Taylors words, singing the word Gay once again but, this time not as a slur uttered by a scorned woman, this time we’re glaad.

Could you imagine being twelve today?