In Taylor Swift’s The Great War, she sings about battling through devastation in a relationship — about clawing your way through the wreckage, bloody but still begging to stay.
It’s the kind of song you don’t just listen to; you survive it.
And honestly?
Mr. Merchant, — sold me the dream.
He didn’t just tell me he cared. He showed it.
He was patient. He was steady. He was everything I had convinced myself I was too broken to deserve.
Sure, there was that weird thing with his girl best friend (and yeah, I tried to go morally blind to it — because when you’re starving for connection, you’ll accept crumbs).
I knew it wasn’t perfect.
But God, I wanted to hold onto even just the tiniest sliver of him.
Even if it meant ignoring the warning signs flashing in neon.
And after our fights?
Instead of apologizing like a normal person, I’d FaceTime him and do a headstand — like some kind of unhinged love acrobat — because humor felt safer than admitting how scared I was of losing him.
If I could make him laugh, maybe I could make him stay.
When the Great War hit
But when The Great War hit, no amount of jokes or desperate little gestures could fix it.
It wasn’t about winning him back.
It was about realizing that maybe love isn’t about fighting harder — it’s about knowing when you’ve already surrendered too much of yourself.
The thing about surviving a Great War is, nobody really wins.
There’s no parade. No medals. No grand reconciliation where everything magically makes sense.
There’s just…you.
Sitting with the pieces.
Wearing battle scars that no one else can see.
After Mr. Merchant — there wasn’t some big, dramatic final scene.
No “wait, come back” moment.
It was a slow, sinking feeling that this time, the silence wasn’t just a pause.
It was a goodbye.
The craziest part?
I kept reaching for my phone, half-ready to FaceTime him, half-ready to do another dumb headstand just to make him laugh.
Muscle memory, I guess.
You can unlove someone, but you can’t unlearn the way you loved them.
The aftermath is weird because it doesn’t hit all at once.
It creeps up in little moments:
When you hear a song that feels like a sucker punch.
When you pass a place you swore you’d go together.
When you catch yourself wanting to tell them something small and stupid.
But here’s what I’m starting to realize —
Surviving the Great War isn’t just about mourning what you lost.
It’s about honoring what you learned.
It’s about forgiving yourself for the ways you tried to hold onto something that wasn’t meant to be held.
It’s about standing up, shaky and bruised, but still standing.
And that’s a win all by itself.
At the end of the day, loving someone — even when it crashes and burns — is never a waste.
It just means you were brave enough to care.
So maybe the Great War wasn’t about losing him.
Maybe it was about finding me.
And trust — this time, I’m not raising a white flag.
I’m raising a new standard.
