i love you, it's ruining my life

Just a place to break down my thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department because I think it's so incredibly layered and deserves a real deep dive into individual lyrics. Sometimes I might look at other albums or songs.

Things I will discuss: Individual lyrics and songs and their context within both their album and Taylor's broader work. Sometimes things from her music videos that have jumped out at me.

Things I will not discuss: Who specifically I think each song is about.

The puzzle pieces line obviously plays off of the prior line: Taylor and her lover fit together perfectly, like pieces of a puzzle. However, it is worth noting that puzzle pieces can, and are in fact meant to be, pulled apart again when you're done playing with them--just as Taylor's lover pulls away from her when he gets tired of playing with her. And just like someone assembling a puzzle anticipates disassembling it and returning it to its box when they're done, Taylor feels that she should have known her relationship, too, would be disassembled and put away until her lover was ready to return to it again.

This line references The Secret Garden, a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett in which a young girl finds the key to a locked "secret garden" that she begins to tend and care for. Like that garden, the secret garden that Taylor cultivates in her mind requires a key to access--that key, presumably, is her music.

In the novel, the secret garden serves as a symbol for rebirth. When spring rolls around and the garden, now tended to by the protagonist Mary Lennox, blooms again, it is coincided by the restoration of Mary's friend, Colin's, health. After years of being kept locked away in a small room, Mary begins taking him for strolls through the garden and, with exercise, he begins to recover from the worst of his ill health.