We all know that TikTok trend with Taylor Swift…Maybe I should narrow it down. I am talking about the one with her 2010 song “Last Kiss” from her infamous Speak Now album. The trend reminisces about times shared together and then acknowledges that there are now times spent apart.
While “Last Kiss” is a breakup song, people have taken the line ‘So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep’ and applied it to old friends or long distance relationships.
What really tugs at my heart strings is when people reminisce about their siblings.
The part where she sings ‘I used to watch you sleep’ might be a little creepy when talking about your siblings, but, I guess if you shared the same bedroom it is inevitable. But, I never thought that watching someone’s life in pictures was too. Swift is saying that she and this person were so close, but now the only thing she knows about this person’s life is what she sees in pictures.
I come from a family with 8 kids and yeah, I know it is a lot. Six girls and two boys (Girls rule the world!). I don’t think you could find a closer group of kids than my siblings and me. It is a bond I know will never be broken. However, being the only sibling to move two hours away for school, is hard. Similar to Swift, I feel like I watch their lives in pictures.
We used to know everything about each other’s lives since we lived together. But now, I know my sister had her first soccer game or that my brother beat his personal record in the gym through pictures. Not because they came home and raved about it.
I am told growing up is a part of life, but it is hard when you miss the people you were growing up with.
Then I snap out of my little homesickness and remember that I can call the people in the pictures and tell them I miss them.
Have you ever heard the saying “best friends are like stars you don’t always see them but, you know they are there”? Our siblings or the people that we miss are our stars! While I am here at school trying to get through finals week I know when I go home I can tell them all about it and they will be proud of me no matter what my grade in Neuro Psychology was.
Life is hard, and if we do not nourish our relationships with people that know almost exactly how hard it is then who is going to tell you they have seen all you can do and you can do this and truly mean it?
At the beginning of Taylor Swift’s Last Kiss, she sings ‘I still remember the look on your face’ Lit through the darkness at 1:58’ The words that you whispered for just us to know.’ That’s the part when we should think about our brothers or sisters. The secret keepers, not as people in the pictures.