15 Years to Forgiveness

with special thanks to Brené Brown and Taylor Swift

Rebirth

In 2007, my friends knew me as an average teacher, frequent drinker, and maker of bad decisions about men. My roommate once came home at 3:00pm to find me on the floor struggling to open a wine bottle. And no, my students did not leave 8th grade reading on grade level, which meant I had singlehandedly doomed them to the school-to-prison pipeline. It was a special time to be in education reform.

To all our surprise, in the years that have followed, I’ve somehow become Mrs. Gordon, ministry wife. The outward markers of my life are a suburban dream: thriving marriage, healthy kids, a deep and wide circle of friends, and of course, a minivan. I’ve mentioned before how we are trees, growing rings around our cores. My outer rings reflect the last decade of growth and change. My inner rings though, those are still memorialized as the messy years. An old friend actually guffawed when I told her about my church lady persona.

2008. Wearing a tank top in a bar, shot in hand. Bless me.

I’m about to drop a sentence uttered in all seriousness by many hipsters before me: Austin was my rebirth. I shed my Okie past and the crazed survival of my post-college years. I became a runner, chose a career, and began stacking together blocks of stability: graduate degree, husband, house. I made new friends, none of whom had seen me struggling with a wine cork at 3pm. We eventually stopped going to Bonnaroo and started becoming those people who never miss a Sunday church service. Had a few kids.

Have you ever experienced the loneliness of feeling like no one knows who you used to be? I felt like I needed one friend in Austin who could understand my past lives. Enter Kristen. She’s been rolling with me since 2015, when I extolled the virtues of the Whole 30 diet to her at a life planning retreat. (Is this blog just a series of Austin clichés?) She was a new friend then, and the thing about new friends is that they give you an opportunity to be a new person.

Over time, Kristen figured out that I wasn’t the health guru who had my whole life vision together. But it was a nice illusion for a minute. We’ve been through some serious stuff over the last 8 years, and her loyalty and lack of judgment have been some of the foundational blocks of our friendship. Fast forward to 2023. We were en route to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Arlington, fancy outfits and all. I lasted about 30 minutes in the car before I blurted out, “I have a story about ‘All Too Well’.”

Shame

This is a story I’ve avoided telling. Like so many of our hidden stories, it’s covered in shame and regret.

Dr. Brené Brown, researcher, defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging”. She says, “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists — it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees….If we speak shame, it begins to wither.”¹ Does it, though?

I was in my early 20s, but it’s a nearly universal experience regardless of age. You date someone who gives you far less than you give them. Maybe they’re incapable, maybe they’re a jerk (eg someone struggling through their own issues and trauma and taking it out on you), maybe you are attracted to people who are bad for you. Whatever the reason, I spiraled into it.

He liked Faulkner and poetry. On my birthday, he asked what experiences I was looking forward to that year. He was older, not part of the endless house party circuit. When I was with him, I felt more special and mature.

And I was thinking on the drive down, any time now
He's gonna say it's love, you never called it what it was

When I wasn’t with him, I felt like shit. He would cancel plans, not reply to texts, appear and be emotionally elsewhere. As someone whose schema in life included a core value of “relentless pursuit of results”, I saw it as a challenge to overcome.² He was telling me so clearly that he was not right for me. I heard that he needed me to try harder and do more. If I could just wear the right outfits or buy him the right book, I’d save him.

If you think that last line sounds ridiculous, you’ve never been in this uniquely exhilarating and hurtful stage of life. You probably had super healthy relationships and conflict resolution abilities at 24. This post is for the rest of us though.

And there we are again when nobody had to know
You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath

It ended like they all do, in bursts of emotion and regret. I don’t remember what I said during our last phone call because I’d had too much to drink. I do know I was desperate, undignified, and lost. At the time, I was halfway around the world in Korea, meant to be having a grand cultural awakening or experience. Instead I was moping over a guy who had moved on, except when he occasionally answered my emails.

The idea you had of me, who was she?
A never-needy, ever-lovely jewel whose shine reflects on you

Breakups are a nearly universal experience. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, right? It wasn’t any one thing that made this one shameful. It was the whole toxic cocktail. It’s hard enough to be mooning over someone who’s less interested than you are. It’s worse when you’re halfway around the world from your support system, and it’s supposed to be one of the most enlightening years of your life. It’s hard enough to accept rejection. It’s worse when you chase it because you’re drinking too much and lack the self-respect to make better decisions.

I felt a lot of personal failure because I’d been conditioned to believe my locus of control was far bigger than it was, and because I was already prone to taking too much responsibility. Also, it’s hard not to feel like a personal failure when he’s just not that into you. My first wrong turn was choosing him, and then I stubbornly doubled down until I couldn’t hide from the failure anymore.

Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it
I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still tryin' to find it

Either you’ve been singing these italicized lyrics in your head as you read, or you’re wondering if I write emo poetry on the side. For the latter camp, the lyrics are from “All Too Well”, written by Liz Rose and Taylor Swift.

Forgiveness

“All Too Well” is a song written for people who are consumed by a relationship, only for the other person to be casually dismissive. A song for those of us who thought we were crazy, or “too much”, for really wanting things to work. I hadn’t been able to hear it without a rush of feelings: the thrill of being understood, the shame of having been in the situation, the catharsis of the specific anger of not being taken seriously.

This song is an anthem, for me and many others. For real, people get tattoos of the lyrics. When Taylor released the 10-minute version, a few music critics wondered if she needed that much time for a breakup song. Other critics said that the 10 minutes was the point. That women so rarely allow themselves to be fully messy and angry in public, that it was a real show of power.

And maybe we got lost in translation
Maybe I asked for too much
But maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up
Running scared, I was there
I remember it all too well

So here I am in Arlington, in my sequined jacket. Kristen has made me an “All Too Well” friendship bracelet. Taylor emerges in her own sequins, alone in a spotlight. As she introduced my song, she said that she’d written it when she was 21 or 22, and she never anticipated that it would become so large. She said that, because the fans loved it so much, she had spent a lot of time performing it, polishing her extended version of it, and now performing that version every night. During this process, she was able to forgive her younger self for what she didn’t know then.

I sobbed. That 2-minute song intro was worth years of therapy. I’d listened to it so much, ruminating on my past mistakes and how awful the whole thing had felt. But here stood the song’s author, saying she had released the shame. And how. She tells the story of this relationship every night on tour, and it’s reached millions. She took something that made her feel so small and made it huge. My girl Brené would be proud.

I don’t remember hearing her sing the song. I was too busy feeling a wellspring of relief and release, 15 years in the making. Kristen held me as I choked out, “She didn’t know when she wrote it how good her life would be. And I had no idea how good my life would be either.”

I cried for the sheer goodness of it all. To have a friend like Kristen, and to experience this moment with her. To build a life in a city I love, with the person who knows, sees, and loves me better than anyone. To have made two beautiful little lives and to have the honor of guiding and raising them.

After the show, I wrote in my journal: I thought I needed forgiveness from him, but I needed to forgive myself. I thought I needed reassurance from him that it was real, but I needed permission to say it’s enough that it was real to me. You can’t change your past, but you can change the story you tell yourself about it.

Our bracelets, which we made while watching Miss Americana obviously. The All Too Well bracelet is on top.

Peace

A few nuances here. I don’t begrudge my old flame anything. Neither of us were able then to understand what a healthy relationship should be. We both caused a lot of hurt and misunderstanding. Our lives have moved forward, and I believe the lessons from those days have made me a more thoughtful person. Besides, what’s the fun in reading Brené Brown if you can’t deeply identify with shame?

I’ve stated repeatedly that this blog is also a record, a legacy of sorts. Who would want an impetuous fling to be part of their legacy? By the time my kids get around to reading this, I might be a grandma celebrating 40 years of marriage. They will only ever know a better version of me than this past life.

But I’m not interested in being their idol as much as their truth-teller. That yes, I made some mistakes, and like anyone, I felt embarrassed about them for a long time. That I thought keeping them hidden would make them somehow go away from my memory or change what happened. The truth is that I behaved in an undignified, careless manner. The truth is that I didn’t know enough to expect better. The truth is that I always knew in my bones that the relationship was doomed from the beginning, and I lied to myself about it. The truth is that I struggled to forgive myself for years, right up until Taylor told me she forgave herself too.

When I hear “All Too Well” now, I don’t feel a tug of regret. I feel free. I no longer think, “I was so young and stupid, I wish I could change it all.” Instead I inwardly smile at younger Emily, how far she had to go, and how much more wonderful her life would become. I’d love to tell her a few things:

This year that you are spending depressed and homesick, struggling with sleeping pills and isolation, is laying a foundational understanding of Korean culture that you will someday use to celebrate your heritage and educate your kids. This sad affair is going to be a powerful lesson in forgiveness and moving past shame. You will completely remake your life, thinking you’ve erased your old self. Only later will you realize that the old self was what gave birth to the new, that your life now wouldn’t be so sweet if it hadn’t been so bitter. You’re going to marry someone who exceeds your biggest dreams. You will love your kids so much that your chest hurts with it. You’ll have friends who really show up for you. Maybe best of all, you’ll grow in compassion every year, until you even have enough for yourself.

PS: Here is the full song, the first time Taylor performed it live, on SNL. The emotion is fierce.

PPS: I’m turning 41 in a few days. We fear aging in our culture, but I strongly feel that each decade has only brought more confidence, wisdom, and maturity. Thankful to not be 24 anymore and proud to have grown and evolved so much since then.

1. Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books, 2012.

2. For those of you who recognize that language, we’ll do a Teach For America post some other day because like I said, it was a special time to be in education reform.