Celebrities

I stumbled upon this sub and I cannot tell you how happy I was to find a place that called TS out on her bullshit. And I want to share my TS story here, because I feel like this is the only place I can do so. This is a rant and it’s a bit long, but it is 100% true and showcases what kind of person she really is.

I used to be a Swiftie. I followed her from her first album all the way up until 1989. My first ever concert was seeing her on her Red tour. I felt like she understood me and cared about me, her music was important to me in so many ways.

When I was 11, I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. For anyone who doesn’t know, AML is one of the most aggressive and deadly blood cancers that mostly affects older men. It was absolutely brutal on my body. I will forever have heart concerns because of the chemo they used to try and kill my cancer. I fell into a deep deep depression.

My care team at the hospital, and my parents, essentially signed me up for every kind of therapy possible to try to get me out of this horrible cloud of depression. I didn’t like most of them, but I found I liked the music therapist and so I chose to do music therapy.

My music therapist found out I loved TS, and together we rewrote the lyrics to “Shake It Off”, which was really big at the time. Our lyrics were about “shaking off” cancer. It was therapeutic.

But then as we talked about it more, we decided to make a music video. We got the entire hospital involved (down to the construction workers across the street) and they brought in a professional camera crew. I sang (horribly, I had cancer and my vocal cords were shot) and we made a video.

The PR team at the hospital sent the video out and it actually generated a substantial amount of buzz. It was an article on People magazine online, as well as FOX and the Daily Mail. It was not long after her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and several months before Taylor was due to come to St. Louis for her 1989 tour. I had tickets, but obviously was unable to go. It crushed me.

It was the goal of everyone to get her to visit the hospital, but I realistically (even as a kid) knew she probably wouldn’t visit us while she was in town. But I still hoped she’d send me something. A little note or a signed card or something to say that she saw me and she cared. After all, her mom was just diagnosed and she would be in town.

Considering all the media buzz, there is no way in hell she or her people didn’t hear about it. Period. And even though the hospital people were reaching out and everyone I knew was using their connections in some way to reach her or her people, it was complete and utter radio silence. Nothing. The concert came and went, she didn’t visit, and I felt like the one person I admired most in the world didn’t care about me.

Now for everyone who hasn’t been to a TS concert, which I will guess is a great deal of you all, people who buy tickets at a certain level receive a kind of swag bag with merch before the concert (or they used to, I have no idea how it is now). A bag, some pins, a Tshirt, etc. I had received one when I went on her Red tour when I was younger. It’s not a super special thing, it’s just random merch they give to people to incentivize them to buy more expensive tickets.

Several months after all this, I received a package through the mail (I’m still in the hospital, mind you) and it was from TS’s people. I was so so excited. But all it was was the aforementioned generic crap. It was clearly a leftover bag because some of the merch was a bit defective, and sitting right on top of the bag’s contents were themed hair ties and barrettes.

Whoever sent this bag didn’t give a flying fuck about me, they wanted me to shut up and stop asking for attention. They didn’t even bother to check to contents of the bag to send me a tshirt that was my size or get rid of the horrific reminder that I have no hair. I made excuses for her for the longest time. “She’s busy” or “her people sent it, not her” but screw that. She couldn’t take the five seconds it takes to scrawl out a quick note to me?

When I tell Swifties this story, they often brush me off and say it wasn’t her. But I don’t care. I was downright suicidal and beyond depressed and the thought that this singer who I admired so very much would send me a quick little something was literally all I clung onto for months.

Yeah, I should probably let it go. But I won’t. It was an awful thing for a person to do, especially someone who admired and loved you so much. Now she’s even more popular and I can’t avoid her stupid face no matter what I do. I am reminded of that horrible feeling every single time I have to hear about her, and I’m so sick of the people who worship her like a god or something when she’s really just a selfish and spiteful person.

TLDR; Taylor doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. Even when it comes to fans with cancer.

EDIT: I just want to clarify for everyone calling me entitled and that it was unrealistic for me to expect anything, I just want to clarify of a few things:

I was in such a dark place mentally. I was a kid going through cancer. Making this video was what motivated me and helped me through a real dark time.

I am stuck in a room. I can’t go anywhere. They were doing construction on the hospital so there were bars on my window. I can’t eat with anyone, so every meal I sit in my room alone. I’m not allowed a door or even a shower curtain. Anything touches the floor I can’t touch it. I had a breakdown when my teddy bear fell off my hospital bed one day.

All I had was Taylor and her music. All I wanted was something quick and kind. And I didn’t receive anything for the longest time and I was upset but I moved on. And then in the middle of all of that, I get this thoughtless bag of crap that showed that they didn’t even bother to take a look through it and remove anything triggering.

Losing my hair was so traumatic. I was in denial for so long and it fell out in chunks. I was embarrassed and lost. I didn’t know who I was. But I had Taylor and her music.

So when I got that bag it wasn’t “I wanted something better” or “this is disappointing”. It was a slap in the face. It was reminding me that i didn’t get to go to the concert. That I can’t take these hair ties and use them like every other fan. That the person who I idolized (I admit that was childish, but I was an actual child) didn’t care. I knew she was big (reminding yall that she wasn’t as big then as she is now) but I still thought she really cared about her fans. Again, that’s naive but I was 11 and had seen so many PR posts about her helping her fans. Clearly I was wrong but I was a kid.

Until you know what that feels like I don’t think it’s fair to sit there and judge.

This is not me being entitled. This is not a post about me complaining that I deserved special treatment because I had cancer. I am not saying she owed me anything.

Thanks ☺️

As far as I know, TS has never been on a psychiatric hold?

I don’t want to get into my whole story, but I was wrongly admitted to a psych ward some years ago. I had a really bad social worker. My parents were given a choice: either they “voluntarily” admit me or the hospital would make me a ward of the state. I was 17 at the time. It was truly terrifying.

The psych ward I went to is NOTORIOUSLY bad, there have been lawsuits and all sorts of scandals. I was left sitting in a hospital gown on a lobby chair while the nurse overdosed a kid on insulin and the other nurses fought at the reception desk over who was going to call the parents.

I had to stand in line to get my blood taken. I broke down and started crying, and one of the other patients sat down and held my hand, trying to comfort me. The nurses yelled at us not to touch each other.

There were a lot of other things that happened but I really don’t want to get into them. That place seemed to punish us instead of help us get better.

So when I heard the lines “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” I was genuinely taken aback. The whole “tortured poet” thing feels so gross, and I feel like that line in particular romanticized abuse, asylums, mental illness. It just left me with a gross feeling.

HAPPY PRIDE!!!!