An Elegy for Our Tortured Projections
Every great relationship, albeit short-lived, I’ve ever been in has been book-ended with a “tortured poet”. So much so, that my time spent with these artists of such have been some of my longest relationships in my life. The beauty of the tortured is that they become creatures of your imagination that are so unreal they become foils of your own self that you don’t recognize.
As a card-carrying member (or patient – depending on your interpretation) of The Tortured Poet’s Department, I feel I can provide my perspective on the album Taylor Swift put out. This album, in my humble opinion, is about her time spent grieving a great love through the vessel of one of those tortured beings that stumbles through the world. Beyond the conjecture of timelines, whispers, and fights it is her most relatable album.
I’ve never loved any of the tortured beings I’ve kissed in the interims of my romances, but in those moments of embrace, I really wanted to, I really thought I did, or at least thought that it was even possible. Except, they have all just been people, kind, sensitive, troubled, regular, realistic people that I imagined were very different and more special.
There’s an easy way about the tortured that make them easy to transfer love onto. If you’re looking for the love or even the like that you just lost, it can be found in the image you create in the eyes of a dreamy, sensitive, tortured creature. Especially when you, yourself, are particularly inclined to the dark.
Arguments, fights, passion, expectations of love that you had for someone real can be laid on the shoulders on the soul of the tortured alongside the cloak of fantastical beliefs you have of them.
When the spell breaks and you see that the imagined person you put upon the tortured, there’s a panic that rushes through you and you are certain that you can bring them back to the person you thought they were. Except, you can’t and at that point your friends hate them. You can’t mention the tortured in group chats anymore but you want to talk about them endlessly.
In early mornings when you look over and see the tortured next to you, you’ll want to reach out and hold them like the person you really want to be holding. When you do wrap your arms around them you don’t quite feel the high you’re looking for but get enough of something; a synthetic drug that keeps you coming back.
Then when they leave, hair messy and sleepy eyes smirking, you’re struck back to the deep loneliness for the real person you miss. You sit on your unmade bed and resist calling that old number, still in your phone, that’s been dancing across your mind. You want to show that real person you’re different, better, more beautiful than ever before but, you’re not. You’re actually so much worse.
Finally it becomes clear, very clear, what is happening and what you’ve been doing. You’re shine completely eclipsed by an idea of a human. The synthetic high gives you anxiety and the withdrawals from it are stronger than you’ve ever felt before – a limerence of highest proportions.
This doesn’t end well if it ends at all. For most of us tortured poets, we keep a tortured around, on retainer, for when we need them again. Those of us who keep one of the tortured around our usually ourselves one too. The relationship is a reciprocal even though neither of you would ever admit that.
If it does end, it’ll become very clear that two agonized people, one more imagined than the other, are not for each other. Two strong fires create a ring of magic that no one can enter, but fighting fire with fire leaves a trail of scorched earth that doesn’t cross the path that needs burning.
When all is said and done the reflection of the real love comes back as a script filled of flashy scenes with stage directions of memories and black and white arguments. The pages show you exactly how it went down and for once you see, clearly, the character flaws.
Then, if you’re lucky, and the timings right, and the stars align, and something special is sprinkled upon you from a higher power, you’ll find someone so far from the tortured that they’ll glimmer with reality. They won’t always understand you the way another tortured may, and thank goodness for that.
All that being said, perhaps I’m just projecting or, perhaps I understood. Like Taylor, the desire for being tortured and keeping one around dissaptes with the realizations that accompany crinkles next to your eyes.
The Tortured Poets Department members (patients) applaud this chapbook anthology, for it is an elegy and effigy of the tortured people in our lives.
