Taylor Swift, Temple Run, and Mending a Broken Heart

Are we out of the woods yet?

Part of the joy of Substack is finding like-minded writers who you wouldn’t have otherwise met. Gifted writer Harry Fritsch is an emerging Brisbane writer who pens weekly posts on video games at The Video Game Storyteller. This week, I’m so pleased to hand the reins over to Harry for this special guest post.

My 2018 began with a pair of unfortunate events—one expected, one not so much. The first was the culmination of a nine-month plan that saw my family spread out across the east coast of Australia, as if we were determined to create a Great Dividing Range of Fritsches. Mum, dad, and my younger sister moved to Geelong, while my older sister began her teaching career in regional North Queensland. I stayed behind in Ipswich, riding high on the thrills of being a nineteen-year-old seeking independence, a completed undergraduate degree, and whatever the next steps may be in what was then a two-year-long relationship…

… which broke up the week after my family moved away. In hindsight, the end hardly came from left field. We had fallen out of love and the writing was well and truly on the wall for our pairing. I just lacked the literacy to read it back then. Even so, the independence I had long desired was now my reality. And it made me completely miserable. I was heartbroken and newly-single, mired deep within the boredom of summer university break, unemployed, and separated by literally thousands of kilometres from my family and closest support network.

At this point, we were barely halfway through January. So much for New Year’s resolutions.

In my listless state, I turned to a mismatched pair of comfort sources—one familiar, one not so much. Temple Run is an endless runner mobile game that had long served as a reliable tool in my procrastination toolkit. My uncle introduced me to the game on his first-generation iPad after my family crossed the Tasman from Auckland to Ipswich in 2011, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Taylor Swift has been in my life since… honestly, who can say? As a child of the 2000s, it kind of feels like she’s always been there, which makes tracing a first memory difficult. Possibly the Hannah Montana movie? My older sister singing around the house about Romeo throwin’ pebbles? What I do remember is that by 2018, my misplaced and regrettable teenage machismo had placed most of Swift’s music into the “inconsequential music for girls” basket. Oh, how a breakup changes that stance.

My apartment was situated near the Ipswich Hospital, halfway up a hill that offered a pretty spectacular view overlooking Brisbane. I would sit by my bedroom window, looking out over millions of people and feeling utterly alone. Elevated geographically, but my mental health was at risk of reaching new lows. The promise of something was still there, but it held no shape to visualise nor matter to hold onto. The path forward was obscured, unreachable.

Temple Run recalls a bygone era of gaming. One where the warm glow of an arcade machine’s high score counter was the main reason to play. Before we cared too deeply about narrative or worldbuilding or characters in our games. You kept playing to make the number go higher. For Temple Run, that means having your character sprint for as long as possible until they inevitably fall victim to a poorly timed jump, stray tree branch, or the demonic monkeys that are always on your tail. Some people label endless runners like Temple Run as overly-simplistic, low-nutritious gaming—and they’re not wrong. Yes, it’s basic and yes, it’s mindless. But who doesn’t enjoy nibbling on some junk food every now and then?

When the heart aches after a relationship fallout, in Taylor we trust. During those dark nights spent trying to piece my life back together, I turned not to the biting cynicism of Reputation or the longing ballads of Speak Now, but to the glitzy pop bangers of 1989. I found myself gravitating towards the wide-eyed optimism of “Welcome to New York” and the dream-pop romance of “Wildest Dreams”. Even the album’s less hopeful tracks filled me with a warmth I was desperately yearning for. Sure, the lyrics of “Out of the Woods” are coated in enough anxious fatalism to make Harry Styles, hopefully, swear off snowmobiles for life (look it up if you’re confused). But man! Those thumping synths made me feel like I could run through a brick wall!

Lacking the motivation to do anything else, I would sit by that bedroom window long into the night, playing Temple Run and listening to 1989 on repeat (Deluxe Edition, naturally). The repetitive, almost meditative nature of Temple Run provided an outlet for me to focus, take stock, and look at my emotions face-on. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary, and eventually, even a little bit healing. When combined with 1989’s boisterous confidence, I began to feel some self-belief creep back in.

Even though I was using headphones that only worked in the left ear and an iPhone 6 that required constant charging to stay alive, I came to really value my late-night Temple Run and 1989 sessions. It was the one time of day where I allowed myself the space to feel what I needed to feel, and both the game and the album were the floatation devices I used to keep my mental state above water.

In the weeks after that pair of unfortunate events, I landed casual work at an Outside School Hours Care and returned to my studies. Independence stopped feeling like such a burden and showed itself for what it really was: an opportunity to discover myself. I was entering adulthood, living away from my family, and had the chance to find out more about the kind of person I wanted to be. There was still a long way to go, and I won’t pretend like the rest of 2018 was all smooth sailing. But at least the path forward was clear, and I could start the journey.

Because if I ever felt myself returning to some messy places during that year, I knew I could run away from some demonic monkeys, listen to Taylor Swift, and feel clean.

You can find more of Harry’s writing here.

More from Dave tomorrow.