While decorating for Christmas, my nieces stopped mid–garland untangling to perform their new choreography to the ten-minute “All Too Well.” No one asked for it. They were just doing it. Full-body collapse. One of them screamed ‘FUCK THE PATRIARCHY’ with the intensity of a kid whose TikTok had fused to her spine. It felt like watching early Cronenberg. Like Videodrome, but with glitter and friendship bracelets.

The other threw herself to the floor during the scarf part like she’d personally been ghosted by Jake Gyllenhaal. I sat on the couch next to my husband, filming like I was witnessing an exorcism. They tried to get their little brothers involved. One refused. The other just spun in a circle until he got dizzy and wandered off.

I’m not a Swiftie, but I go along with it. I respect their commitment to the drama. They scream about betrayal like they’ve lived through three divorces and a custody battle with Scooter Braun. I was laughing, playing along until they hit that one line:

“The idea of me,who was she?”

It hit. Not because I was suddenly feeling the song. But because I was thinking about myself.

That was me.

The idea.

Who was she?

At this point, reader, I should reveal that I’m bisexual. Say it three times and let it lose its flavor so we can move on.

An ex once told me she loved the idea of me.

I said “same,” like a joke.

But it wasn’t a joke.

It was a reflex.

It was true in the way you sometimes realize too late that you’ve built your whole personality around being consumable.

We weren’t dating. Maybe a situationship. Maybe just a long audition for a role she wasn’t sure she wanted to cast. It was 2010. We were twenty. Everyone was sad in a performative way. Tumblr was the weather. We watched The Runaways in her apartment on a couch that smelled like microwaved lotion and wet shoes. She said she felt like Joan Jett. I told her she could pull it off. She kissed me and left five minutes later like that was a normal thing to do.

She was cool in a way that made me feel like a bad copy of something she’d already outgrown. Everything about her was curated. The chipped nail polish. The playlists. The way she cried once and then said, “don’t look at me.” I didn’t. I didn’t know if I was allowed.

She took things from me. Rings, sweatshirts, that half-burnt candle I actually liked. She’d post selfies in them without tagging me. She never called me her girlfriend. She said she didn’t like labels. She said I made her feel safe, but only in private. Which is the same as saying I wasn’t real.

I once asked her what we were.

She said, “Don’t ruin it.”

Like clarity was violent.

Like I should’ve been grateful to be kept around at all.

She loved the way I looked in her bed but not in her life.

She said she loved the idea of me.

And that version? That version was easy to love. She didn’t cry at inopportune times or ask how long this was going to last. She didn’t have a stomach condition or a tendency to overexplain her jokes. She looked good in low light and kept her mouth shut when the mood got weird. She was a backdrop. A prop. A limited edition. Something you could claim without responsibility.

The real me sat on the bathroom floor reading the same three texts over and over like they were sacred. The real me stared at her last story post and tried to decode the timestamp like a psycho. The real me wanted to scream but didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to be the thing she rolled her eyes about later.

I once told her I missed her and she said, “You’re sweet.”

I don’t know how I didn’t catch fire on the spot.

She didn’t love me.

She loved what I implied.

She loved that I could be her rebellion without consequences.

That I looked good in pictures and didn’t ask to be defined.

She loved the silence.

She loved that I played along.

I was her practice run for a life she never built.

I was her queer beta test. Her maybe. Her pre-phase.

I obsessed over it. I still do.

Not her. Not anymore.

Just the line.

The idea of me, who was she?

What does that even mean?

What version of me did she get to love that I didn’t even meet?

What was the version?

Was she cooler?

Was she less annoying?

Did she not talk about fear or say things like “I think I feel too much”?

Was she just a look?

Now I’m married.

I pay taxes.

I have a preferred grocery store.

I know how I like my coffee.

I don’t spiral often.

But I’m back on the couch, and they’ve restarted the song.

They’ve added more choreography. More collapse.

I laugh so hard I wheeze.

Something leaves my body.

I say it’s my soul as a joke, but really I think it’s shame.

They’re screaming the bridge again.

‘FUCK THE PATRIARCHY’ like a blood oath.

One fake sobs into a snowman pillow.

The others writhing across the floor like the ghost of a girl who once made eye contact with Harry Styles.

I keep filming.

I keep laughing.

Because this time, I finally get it.

Not the song.

Not the moment.

Me.

I get me now.

Sort of.

Enough to know I wasn’t the problem.

I was just the prop.

And bitch, this prop’s unionized.