BETTY, I WON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
ABOUT WHY YOU SWITCHED YOUR HOMEROOM BUT
I THINK IT’S CAUSE OF.…ME
BETTY… ONE TIME I WAS RIDING ON MY SKATEBOARD
WHEN I PASSED YOUR HOUSE
IT’S LIKE I COULDN’T BREATHE
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
While her ‘folklore’ album was my soundtrack for summer, Taylor Swift recently released ‘Betty’ which is rather more fitting for fall, considering its high-school storyline of teen drama. It’s one of the best story songs I’ve heard in recent years ~ compelling and powerful with a few well-chosen words to convey an entire tableau of the emotional mayhem that happens when you’re only seventeen. My work pal Andy said this was his favorite song from the album and the reason for why it resonated so much was that he could relate to the guy in the song, and I can totally see it. A playboy with a heart of gold is impossible not to love, even if there’s emotional wreckage left in his wake. I can see Andy filling that role with ease. (And I was totally Inez, I admit – but this time it was true! Still am on most days.)
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
Ahh, high school drama and trauma ~ always so heightened and extreme, and simultaneously innocuous and fleeting. How much hurt we knowingly and unknowingly inflict on those we love, those who mean the most to us. I’ve long maintained that it’s sometimes more painful to hurt someone else than to be the one who’s getting hurt. The sort of pain that transpires when you’re the one doing the hurting can haunt you far longer than the pain you get when on the receiving end, and it’s a heartache that shades and blunts all the happiness you might feel forever after. I didn’t learn that lesson until it was too late, and by then those moments had been carved permanently into my heart, and the awfulness I sometimes perpetrated became a stain on everything good I might have done.
BETTY, I KNOW WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG
YOUR FAVORITE SONG WAS PLAYING FROM THE FAR SIDE OF THE GYM
I WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
I HATE THE CROWDS, YOU KNOW THAT
PLUS, I SAW YOU DANCE WITH HIM
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
I have always lived in the belief of having no regrets, because we are all the sum of our history and experiences, and changing just one of those little decisions or moments might change all the work and effort we have executed in the hopes of being better. Now I’m not so sure. I think I might have done things that made that road easier, that might have healed the hurt a little faster. I would have been kinder ~ that wouldn’t have cost anything, it wouldn’t have hurt anyone, and it wouldn’t have been that difficult were it not for a cold sense of pride and perfection that steeled me against a world that wasn’t always out to get me. I would have been more open and vulnerable, allowing my heart to be broken because it would eventually ~ no matter what ~ and that might not have been the worst thing then. I would have also done better at mending those hearts I did break, instead of finding excuses to be angry and cruel, and leaving them behind.
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING, BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We can’t go back though. We can’t magically fix the past even if we do our best to make amends. There is grace in the effort to try, but there’s no way to do it without leaving a scar, or stirring up the muck that might have settled in the ensuing years. I’d like to think I have forgiven and been forgiven for my own mistakes and faults, but forgiveness is a messy business. Rarely completely fulfilling, it’s become more than specific closure I seek, and more about making the world a little safer and less difficult for the people in my life now. It would be easy to slip into anger and rage at the person I once was, and at those who I ended up hurting. That’s the thing about hurting people ~ the darkness feeds upon itself, multiplying while ricocheting off its own hurt and causing more hurt along the way. Collateral damage. And all that you do unto others will be done more insidiously upon yourself. You just don’t know that yet.
I WAS WALKING HOME ON BROKEN COBBLESTONES JUST THINKING OF YOU
WHEN SHE PULLED UP LIKE A FIGMENT OF MY WORST INTENTIONS
SHE SAID “JAMES, GET IN, LET’S DRIVE.”
THOSE DAYS TURNED INTO NIGHTS
SLEPT NEXT TO HER, BUT I DREAMT OF YOU ALL SUMMER LONG
We don’t always get a second chance to make things right. Especially when those transgressions occurred at the tender age of seventeen. At that time in life it feels like all you have is time, but it moves quickly, and it distracts and destroys, and before you know it you’re in your 40’s and haven’t learned a goddamned thing about how not to hurt people. Fall brings it all back, and I remember fall in Amsterdam. I remember football games and band practice and cornfields filled with crows. I remember the boy who killed himself and the girl whose heart I broke. I remember raking leaves and hating my family and wondering why I should be the one to survive. The smell of burning wood. The sting of salt in my eyes. The longing no one explained. The loneliness. My own broken wings.
What would I do if I could go back and do it all over again? What would any of us do? Would we whisper to our old selves what moves to make, what moves to avoid? Would we write notes of guidance, leaving our shadows with explicit instructions on what was about to happen? It wouldn’t make a difference, not in my world anyway. There was nothing I would have heard back then, especially if it came from my own voice.
BETTY, I’M HERE ON YOUR DOORSTEP
AND I PLANNED IT OUT FOR WEEKS NOW
BUT IT’S FINALLY SINKIN’ IN
BETTY, RIGHT NOW IS THE LAST TIME
I CAN DREAM ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
YOU SEE MY FACE AGAIN
THE ONLY THING I WANNA DO
IS MAKE IT UP TO YOU
SO I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
And so we have James, showing up at Betty’s party, all hope and promise and the possibility of redemption, like all of us trying to make up for a summer of mistakes, for a stretch of unforgivable actions, for everything we didn’t know back then. No matter what might happen afterward, in that one single moment there is grace. Solace. Healing. In the act of trying there is a humility that becomes its own balm, and the way we have to forgive ourselves.
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WILL YOU HAVE ME? WILL YOU LOVE ME?
WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?
IF YOU KISS ME, WILL IT BE JUST LIKE I DREAMED IT?
WILL IT PATCH YOUR BROKEN WINGS?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We never quite discover what Betty does ~ the song is left open in the best possible way. No one is guaranteed a happy ending. Happy endings are rare when you really think about it. We also have a somewhat skewed view of what makes a happy ending ~ is it really about battling all the illness and hurt and making it to an ancient age through years of discomfort and fatigue and pain? Isn’t a happy ending when we go out at our prime, at our most jubilant and hopeful, struck down at the height of all that we will ever be? I don’t know. Fall asks such questions in preparation for winter. I’m not quite ready to answer. Let a few hard frosts embolden our resilience.
We can try to go back and right the wrongs of the past by being better in the present and future. Those of us who have made mistakes can spend a lifetime making up for them, and maybe that makes us better people. So here we are again, standing on the doorstep of what we’re going to be in the next moment, standing on the doorstep of what we still might become.
