image via ABC Australia
@taylorswift released The Tortured Poets Department and it is a good album. I started crying when I was listening to it at work. But out of all the songs that were in this album, one song stuck with me. That is track 14 – The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.
The reason why I’m talking about this song is because, for some reason, many of the lyrics almost reflect to that time, the time I learned the truth about an ex-friend of mine and their darkest secret that they tried to hide for 2 years.
This song brought back memories and old feelings that I thought I had sorted through. Turns out, that was kinda true.
For context: last year, I released this blog post where I talked about my emotional ordeal after learning about my ex-friend’s crime. Since those events, our entire friendship group fell apart to the point where we didn’t want to be associated with each other anymore. And when people ask what happens, it’s either we don’t talk about it, say mean things about each other, and in rare cases, address the truth. And that makes sense because the truth was the hardest part to accept. That this person lied and it made us realize we all suck at being friends and we can’t trust each other anymore.
I thought that listening to 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and RED (Taylor’s Version) was enough to help me process what happened. But in order for me to reach acceptance, I needed to listen to this track.
My interpretation of TSMWEL is about learning the truth about someone. Someone who tried to hide something and now, they can’t look at them the same. This is evident through the song’s lyrics. Many of them somewhat aligned with the events that happened last year.
Verse 1 – Learning the truth
Was any of it true?
Gazing at me starry-eyed
In your Jehovah’s Witness suit
Who the fuck was that guy?
You tried to buy some pills
From a friend of friends of mine
They just ghosted you
Now you know what it feels like
To me, this is someone learning the truth and wanting confirmation if it is true or not. Interestingly enough, this verse aligned well with many of the things that happened not only between me and this person, but also what happened with our friendship group. Learning about this person’s crimes pretty much brought back memories and drama from the past, it felt like history was repeating itself, but this time, it was happening to them.
Verse 3 – Anger
While verse 2 didn’t have a stronger resonance in terms of our friendship group’s downfall and this person’s actions, the last verse made up for it. Most specifically, these lines:
In fifty years will all this be declassified
And you’ll confess why you did it
And I’ll say, “Good riddance”
and
I would’ve died for your sins
Instead I just died inside
And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time
To me, this feels like I dodged a massive bullet. At the same time, it’s the anger and acceptance that I’ve felt when learning what this person did. When they argued that “it was a huge misunderstanding” and that they didn’t tell anyone because people would turn on them, a part of me wanted to feel bad for this person. Remember, this person was defined as a “really awesome dude” and nobody wanted to believe this happened. I would have defended this person but what they did isn’t something to shove underneath the rug.
It also didn’t help that at the time, there was a lot of peer pressure to unfriend and block this person. My personal Facebook friend list was shared on our group chat since I was the last person who found out about the news, so it made sense that my friend list was brought up.
The Chorus – Timelines align
Another thing worth talking about is the chorus:
And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know
If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
And I don’t miss what we had, but could someone give
A message to the smallest man who ever lived?
Living in Australia, the summer in the northern hemisphere is winter down under. So timeline-wise, it makes sense. And to those being really pedantic about it, yes, May is autumn in Australia, but Melbourne is really cold so it does feel like winter. Also, the events happened during the final week of May, so technically, we’re approaching winter).
Personally, this feels like something I would like to say to the person or to those still associated with them (because apparently, some still want to be connected with this person). This feels like I wanted to have a final chat to close the books or a final chance of closure. But at the same time, I don’t want to talk to them. What they did is wrong and I should make peace with it. But just like the last lines of the chorus, I’m using this essay as a way for me to “send a message to the smallest man who ever lived.”
The final lines
Lastly, I want to talk about the final lines of the son
You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing
And in plain sight you hid
But you are what you did
And I’ll forget you, but I’ll never forgive
The smallest man who ever lived
This person lied and pretended for TWO WHOLE YEARS. They acted, even when people found out, that they did nothing wrong. All the evidence was easily available through Google but none of us did the research. Interestingly enough, that is how many of us found out. One of our mutuals literally Google searched their name and there it was, in plain sight, and none of us knew about it.
At some point, I will forget this person. Right now, I don’t mention his name as it’s something worth forgetting. I’m also starting to forget what this person looks like. But it’s hard to forgive someone who did something this bad.
I highly doubt we’ll see each other again, especially due to the severity of their actions and Australia’s Border Security. But The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived is the perfect song to help me finalise and process how I truly feel about this person. Many of the lyrics aligned with the events that unfolded last year, making it the perfect song to look back, reflect, and eventually, move on.
My final message to The Smallest Guy Who Ever Lived
So to The Smallest Guy Who Ever Lived in my life, I hope there will come a day when we do cross paths, but I won’t turn back as I would no longer recognize you. I hope that when you approach me, I see you as this random stranger on the street, and that bad gut feeling that I had back in 2017 will kick in, warning me to leave in peace. After all, there is no point in fixing all of this.
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