People will talk no matter what you do. Taylor has proof, and so do I.
The noise
The first verse of “Cleveland!” is basically a highlight reel of everything people have said about her. She’s not a girl’s girl. Why is she dressed like that? She’s not even that cute.
It hasn’t stopped. This week alone, I read one article saying her new songs are stuck in high school, and another reminded me she was criticized for her previous album for being too dark and swearing too much, people even called her a witch. Different verdicts, same comment section: poor little billionaire. Now people are upset she hasn’t released her wedding photos, as if choosing to be a singer-songwriter meant choosing no privacy, or choosing to stop being human.
People see you from wherever they’re standing in their own life, with their own hurts, and whatever they decided about you before you ever opened your mouth. One critic hears high school. Another hears too much darkness. Both verdicts say more about where the critic is standing than about her. But when you’re on the receiving end, you feel it all. You take in the negative, and you never get to see what’s creating it.
Scathing take 'bout how I'm fake
And he could find someone younger
I can see what they mean
It’s easy to say criticism shouldn’t hurt, especially when it’s aimed at someone with money and famous friends. But she still has a human nervous system and a human brain, and there’s research showing it. In a 2003 study published in Science, Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues found that being socially excluded activated some of the same brain regions involved in physical pain. Rejection isn’t a figure of speech. Your brain processes it a lot like a physical injury.
If a regular person opened Facebook and found friends and strangers alike calling her these things, we’d feel terrible for her. People would reach out and comfort her. When it’s someone famous, she isn’t allowed to hurt. It’s just the media. It’s just people talking: poor little billionaire.
So when Taylor writes about shame, she’s writing about real injury. The same goes for the rest of us.
Seen for real
This whole series has been about masks.
In Pink Clouding in the Ashes, capacity came back all at once, and we used it to build a version of ourselves we wanted to be. It was still someone we created, and it fell away because it wasn’t true. That’s why, when the pink cloud lifted, she walked away. She wasn’t the person she had put forward.
In Patient Zero in the Ember, she’s watching another woman fall for the man who dimmed her. He charmed everyone, and he loved how everybody loved him more than he loved either of them. He saw the mask and loved what it reflected back, and never met what was underneath. Being seen by the wrong person is how the light gets taken.
In Babylon in the Flame, he’s climbing for an image while she’s home hanging Christmas lights, trying to be what he wants, until the mask burns off and the truth underneath shows. That part is harder than it sounds. When you’ve worn a mask long enough, the face underneath feels like a stranger’s.
“Cleveland!” is what comes after. She meets someone who loves the parts she was criticized for. He likes that she’s quirky, that she’s silly, that she dances like nobody’s watching when everybody is. Then he took her to Cleveland, his hometown, to meet his people. Being seen by the right person looks like being woven into his actual life, not kept out of the picture.
There, that house with the porch is where he lived as a kid
He's been saying forever, must not have read that
Being loved for the image is exhausting, because you have to keep the image up. Being loved underneath it is where you finally get to rest.
I’ve lived all three of those songs. I’ve spent a pink cloud too fast, been dimmed by someone who only saw the mask, and decorated a house for someone else’s image. Then I found my own Cleveland.
Co-regulation
One Christmas, Scott was helping me put together this climbing dome thing for the kids in the backyard. It had a gajillion and a half pieces, and none of them seemed to fit where they should. I got so irritated that I threw a couple of pieces on the ground and had a full temper tantrum.
He just laughed and kept building.
That’s when I realized he wasn’t going to run away because I was being me. He loved me with all of it, flaws included. We complement each other. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not around him.
This is the love of my life, hey, hey, hey
He likes what he likes, what he likes, and he likes me
He likes what he likes, what he likes, and he likes me
That’s co-regulation. Your nervous system settles in the presence of someone else’s calm. It doesn’t have to be a partner. I have a whole chapter about this in Spiraling Into Control. It can be a best friend. It can be a parent. It can even be a dog. One study of 240 married couples measured stress responses with a spouse in the room, a friend, or a pet, and pet owners had the lowest reactivity and quickest recovery when their pet was there.
Having a co-regulation partner isn’t the same as using one, though. Co-regulation works when the presence is steady, when it feels safe, and when you actually let yourself lean on it. A dog in the next room while you doom-scroll isn’t co-regulation. A dog’s head in your lap while you breathe is. If the person you’re leaning on is as dysregulated as you are, you’re just two storms inside the same teacup.
The Rise
For me, Rise means becoming who I am.
It doesn’t mean the Spiral is over. There will be more Ashes, more Embers, more Flames. But because I’m grounded and I know who I am, I get back to the Rise, back to me, quicker every time.
Scott was the one who co-regulated me through the hard times at first. What that taught me is to be myself whether he’s in the room or not.
That’s what I hear in “Cleveland!” The criticism didn’t stop. She just has somewhere to land now, and it rolls off faster.
So hate all you like.
That’s the whole song in four words. You don’t have to like me. I like me, and he likes me. Sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.
So, where do you land?
Who gets the version of you that’s under the mask?
What’s your calming presence: a person, a place, a dog?
When criticism hits, how long does it take you to find your way back to yourself?
If you don’t have an answer to the second one yet, start there. You don’t need a Travis. You need one presence that doesn’t flinch when you’re being you.
