Last Spring Taylor Swift started her 1989 World Tour. The Fall before, the tickets went on sale. And a lot of people bought tickets. Presale, on sale, in sale , ALL THE SALES until very quickly, it was sold out. And a lot of my friends were going to see the show. I had just planned a trip to Texas and wasn’t looking to spend any more money and honestly, it was a year away. Who even knows what I’m going to be doing in a year?  I was probably going to have another cruise lined up and wouldn’t even be in the states when this concert was happening.

Not to ruin the ending for anyone but that did not happen.

I honestly didn’t really think about it for a year. Then October rolled around and the T-Swift lovers rolled in. Everyone was going. People were driving from all over to see her. “You didn’t get a ticket and you live there?” judged, well, everyone.

So I came up with a plan and convinced a few friends to join. How hard could it be to buy tickets day of? Operation Taylor Swift was this: wait until just after the concert started, buy the cheapest tickets, and go join the fun.

Only one of those came true.

Saturday came and I had been watching the tickets on all the sites. We had all decided on price and agreed to not go over that number.

Another spoiler, we went over that number.

Anyway we all also agreed to grab dinner before because there’s really nothing that chips and queso can’t fix. We waited, and we laughed, and we watched as the ticket prices grew higher and higher, even after the concert started. Feeling a little discouraged, I read the ticket prices between salsa dips to see what everyone was thinking, until finally one girl said "let’s just do it". I think we all looked at her like she was a little crazy but also like kids at Christmas. So we did it. After trying 3 different credit cards, somehow the tickets went through on mine. “Call an Uber” I mumbled as the tickets downloaded to my phone and the cash was whisked away from my checking account. In the car, we were all a lot excited and a little frantic. It all happened really fast, which yes, was the plan but also was a lot to take in. As I looked closer at my phone, my heart sank. “These Tickets Must Be Printed. No Tickets on a Mobile Device will be Accepted”. In case you didn’t catch it the first time: we are in a car, headed to the Georgia Dome and at this point in time, iPhone’s cannot print.

I started to panic. We tried calling everywhere. If it was close and we thought it had printer potential, we called. No one would let us print the tickets. Another thing to note is that while we are frantically calling, we also start to realize we aren’t moving. Traffic was backed up several blocks because of the concert. So we did what any normal person would do: we jumped out of the car and prepared ourselves to run 7+ blocks to a concert that at this point, we could not attend. Then the miracles started flooding in. We stepped into the BBQ store Twin Smokers BBQ (That’s right, the link is here so you can know them/eat there because they gave life to our crushed dreams, okay?). I’m still not sure if it was the distraught look on our faces or the fact that I looked like an asthmatic who had just run 3 blocks, but whatever the case she agreed to print the tickets. There's a cute picture of me hugging my friend out of sheer excitement that I'll post one day. And by cute I mean sad and by post it one day I mean it will never see social media, but it was a sweet moment. From there we ran the rest of the way only to see our fav singer belt her new album to a roaring crowd. And it was absolutely magical.

I tell this story to everyone, probably with a little more descriptions and a lot more hand gestures. Literally someone can be talking about a Swiffer and I’m like “DID YOU SAY TAYLOR SWIFT” and just launch into the whole thing.

I’m telling you this because on that day in Atlanta, four girls just needed a win. Life wasn’t hard for us, but that season felt a little jaded.  One of us was in the middle of planning a wedding and it wasn’t quite as fun as everyone said it would be.  One of us was trying to deal with job woes and navigating what this new season looked like. One of us had just agreed to a blind date and the reality that we were in our upper twenties and single was really sinking in. And one of us was  frustrated at life, frustrated with a boy and just needed to spend one night not thinking that life wasn’t exactly where we thought it would be.

We needed Taylor to sing Trouble so we could belt it from the top of our lungs and remember the thrill and the heartache of past mistakes. We needed her to tell us that we were beautiful and brave and clean. We needed her to sing Bad Blood and remind us that sometimes people don’t stay no matter how much you want them too. But in the same breath remind us the ones that do are worth the fight. We needed her to sing about moving to a new city and falling in love and that band aids just won’t fix some of the holes people have left on our hearts.

Because we knew this, but when a celebrity who turns her trials into Grammy’s tells you, it just means more.

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