Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Anatomy of the Post-Breakup

Ah, love. That one feeling that sparks wars and inspires the best out of every human being. It's one of the most glorious experiences anyone can have, and the depth of the feelings, the emotions, and all the attendant behaviors that accompany it can quite literally be life-changing. Love strikes you out of the blue and jettisons you along a path you probably wouldn't have taken.

For better or worse, love builds your character and influences your worldview. But of course, as with all human affairs, love can be impermanent. It possesses a cruel element of transcience and fleetingness that kills the fire when not taken care of. And thus, with love comes heartbreak, and one can't be divorced from the other without rendering both concepts meaningless.

Apart from the death of a loved one, breakups have been described in the literature to be "one of the most distressing, traumatic and bewildering experiences ... that an individual can experience." Breakups can either be precipitated by smaller, seemingly inconsequential factors, or they can be catalyzed by one sharp blow. As with the uniqueness of each individual and the dynamics that they create in a relationship, a breakup can also be because of wildly different reasons—wrong timing, distance, miscommunications, and more.

On her 7th studio album, Taylor Swift wanted to capture the essence of love in all of its glory. The appropriately named Lover album was dubbed as "a love letter to love itself," and thematically captures different facets of the feeling—from the anxious fear about losing a loved one and the jazzy song about pursuing love regardless of how difficult it is, to the hopeful comfort of finding the one and a song that suspiciously sounds like a marriage vow.

One song that you'd probably feel to be out of place is Track 10. Amid all the happy, poppy, lovey-dovey atmosphere of most of the album, Death By A Thousand Cuts goes the opposite way. It's a heart-wrenching and vulnerable song that Swift wrote to discuss what happens when love fails and two people go their separate ways.

And though breakups and heartbreaks are things we don't want in a relationship, sometimes it becomes an inevitability.

The agony that comes with breakups

The song title already paints a gruesomely painful picture. The narrator compares the pain of breaking up and losing a loved one to death by a thousand cuts. The term itself originates from Imperial China as a form of torture and execution called lingchi. Without going into a more graphical description of the execution method, lingchi was the slow and agonizing path to death and was a rather inhumane punishment.

The fact that the pain of a breakup is likened to lingchi is, of course, fairly accurate. The pain may come abruptly or it may gradually worsen over time, but regardless, it feels as though a part of you gets cut open and you can't do anything to ease the pain (the same way that those who suffer lingchi are bound and have no other option but to endure until they breathe their last).

A breakup can leave you with emotional cuts that become so vulnerable and raw to the touch. Anything that serves as a reminder of the past relationship feels like rubbing salt on a wound and makes the pain much more pronounced. It also feels as though you're bleeding out all over your body and you could feel your life slipping from you.

With this, we can already imagine the state of mind that the narrator was in when she sang the song: the breakup was fresh and she's riddled with so many questions, doubts, what ifs, and distress. Each new question brings a new cut; each time she remembers the memories, the cuts run deeper. Trying to move on ruptures the wounds and sends the blood gushing out.

It should be understood that Death By A Thousand Cuts doesn't deal with the question of who's right in the relationship and who's at fault as to why it failed. It doesn't deal with the gray areas that come in relationships. Instead, it focuses on the immediate effects of the breakup on either party, whether that's the one who called the relationship quits or the one who got dumped.

Either way, if the love was strong enough, I'm of the opinion that both lovers will be hurting.

The intro as the narrator's psyche

The song actually begins in an interesting way. There's a beat drop and then a chorus of 24 "my"s that alternates between the left and right ears of the listener. At times, they get close enough to feel as though they were being whispered right into your ears. On other times, it's distant and muffled and feels atmospheric thanks to the production.

In any case, as the intro progresses, the "my"s become more intense and linger more strongly in your ears. It sounds chaotic and actually takes the form of the never-ending questions and thoughts that run through the narrator's mind. With the frantic pace of the intro, Taylor sets up a haunting and melancholic tone similar to how a heartbroken person might view the breakup in the next few days or weeks.

The intro repeats throughout the song during key moments, emphasizing the anxious rumination that the narrator falls into. During Verse 2, the intro repeats in the background, well into the final chorus.

Interestingly, the series of "my"s can also be related with another song on the album, Lover. During the chorus of Lover, Taylor sings, "You're my, my, my lover," which when considered alongside Death By A Thousand Cuts, takes on a parallel but painful form—you're no longer mine, so my voice cuts short at "my" and can't continue on to "lover."

Death by a thousand cuts as a metaphor

Immediately following the intro, the production still a little and Taylor's voice enters crisp into the listener's aural field. Taylor begins with a metaphor: that a breakup and the execution feel one and the same.

She then describes a typical post-breakup scenario. The narrator is jolted from their sleep with intrusive memories she just doesn't want to consider during this time. The memories paint a lost image that the narrator can't return to. She can't make any more memories with this person, and when her lover left, that's all she's ever left with.

Memories are a broken heart's poison. To grapple with the pain, she tries to find solace in alcoholic substances, getting herself too drunk so she may wallow in her pain. But she knows that no matter how drunk she gets, it doesn't change the reality that she'd wake the next morning all alone with her lover long gone. In fact, it might even make her feel a whole lot worse. Drinking to "drown the sorrow" simply doesn't give her the permission to feel and move on from the loss. Instead, it traps her into a cycle of coping with alcohol which might bring a temporary sense of high, but in the end, she'll crash back harder to the ground.

A relationship can be viewed as building a house with your lover. There are a lot of things in the relationship-house that belong to the two lovers. Now that her lover had left her, the narrator feels trapped in a house that doesn't let the light come in. The windows are "boarded up" and she can't look past the situation. When considered in light of the rest of the song, there are elements of hopeful hurt that still wishes the relationship would come back to the way it was. Or, interpreted in another way, the narrator might be trying to look outside the "windows of this love" to find a positive light to her suffering, even if she knows any silver lining is a bittersweet thing that would make her feel so much worse.

The house metaphor also connects with the next line: "Chandelier's still flickering here." The narrator and her lover established such a grand relationship together. The chandelier can be thought of in this context as being a fixture that marks how the relationship was supposed to be long-term. If it were only temporary, the narrator could've settled for simple lights. But no, the chandelier hangs over them and stood as a witness to how the relationship had so much potential to last for a lifetime. Now, it only stands as a lingering ghost that still burns embers of hope for the relationship's revival, even if it might already be impossible.

The last lines of the chorus describe the crux of the song. The narrator feels so miserable. She can't pretend like everything's okay. She can't be out and about hiding the pain beneath fake smiles. It's difficult to actually consider doing anything because she feels like an open wound cut open each time she reminisces and ruminates.

She's not okay. She's miserable. The pain is agonizing and it's intolerable. And this premise is what underlies the rest of the lines in the song.

The reeling

Heartbroken people have different ways to deal with the pain. Some write their feelings out, others try to drink themselves to death, many look for something to distract them from the throbbing hurt. In this song, we see the narrator trying to do something that will help them not think of the pain as much as possible.

She tries to pamper herself, buy extravagant dresses, literally anything to make her feel good about herself. But all of these acts are premised on the fact that she now has so much time to spare and, knowing that the idle mind is a devil's workshop, and she has to fill the gaping space with other things. She goes out on trips and tries to find beauty in the world around her, going as far as taking "the long way home." If she doesn't, the thought of her ex-lover would come crashing back into her mind all over again.

During one of the more mundane nights when the narrator feels all the despair that she had been avoiding, she decides to ask the traffic lights if she'll ever recover and be her old self again. Interestingly, the traffic lights can stand as a metaphor for how heartbroken people will likely experience a phase when they're considering chasing after their ex or just moving on altogether.

Essentially, Taylor asks the traffic lights: should I "stop" myself from spiraling further and move on? Or should I "go" after my ex-lover in the hopes of rekindling our relationship? In either case, she asks if things will play out nicely. But the traffic lights can only know so much, and they tell her that they don't know the answer.

The only thing that can answer the question of stopping or going is time itself. But heartbroken people also have a skewed perception of time; sometimes time feels agonizingly slow that they can feel each second of it; sometimes time flies by like a blip.

Returning to the house analogy for a bit more, a relationship is wholly and fully owned by the lovers. Everything inside their "house" (relationship) is theirs. The small details such as the way the ex-lover's facial mannerisms are on display when they're on the phone, or the way the ex-lover's smile brightens up the room, the future, the dreams they built together—all of these once belonged to the two lovers.

But with their breakup, what once was theirs is no one's now. Without the two of them, all the other details in their relationship stop being exclusive. Her ex-lover could very well be in the arms of another. The ex-lover might find someone else to build a new house with. To the narrator, this future possibility (or inevitability) is a thought that tears her heart apart.

The relationship and her lover—all of these are things she doesn't have now. And that reality is so emotionally dragging that it just makes her feel worse overall.

Further, the two lovers are in proximity to one another. Whether they live in the same old town or connected virtually or through their network of friends, chances are, the narrator will always stumble upon her ex-lover. Seeing exes is a bit of an awkward affair, and with the wound she's carrying, the baggage just seems to weigh her down even more.

Traces of him also exist everywhere: in the songs the narrator has sung to him, the art she created in his honor, the future she dreamed of with him beside her—all of these linger like the scent of a perfume so strong it becomes imprinted into memory. And that's basically one more thing that kicks her down. She remembers him; she might even say she remembers everything all too well.

And that's when the memories of what he said and promised surface in her memories again. He, the ex-lover, did say that their relationship was a "great love" that could last for "ages," a long-term commitment that they both swore on love's name. His leaving also meant the disappearance of the promises. There's nothing left to hold on to. With the act of the ex-lover, the relationship is demolished and she's left there all alone, holding on to the ghosts of the past.

And still, despite knowing that it was all over, she continues to write pages. The narrative should've been over, but her denial forces her to imagine made-up scenarios and fantasies that might not come true. She thinks that sure, things didn't work out for now, but surely they might in the future?

This degree of naivety also baffles the narrator as she questions why she keeps doing it, knowing her own fantasies will hurt her. But oh well, we can probably attribute this behavior to the age-old saying:

"The heart wants what it wants, or else it does not care."

The questioning, the remembering

Among Swifties, there's one part of the song that has become so iconic, it's now a rite of passage among their fandom: the Verse 2.

The Verse 2 is often confused for the bridge of the song because of how rapid-fire it's sung and how short and sharp the words are. Here, the pain of the narrator becomes deeply evident—the reason why she feels this terribly is because of how much he, the ex-lover, had taken from her, and how at the end of it all, she's left empty and abandoned.

Taylor begins with the line: "My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch."

Simply, she has given her everything she has to offer. All of her love, she dedicated to him. The temple of her body was offered to him. Her feelings and emotions, her love and her willingness to give him her everything—there's no part of her that he didn't have. Faithful and unwavering, she loved him and let him into her own world and sanctuary. This says that he knew her so well; too well in fact that without him, everything feels so empty.

But despite it all, despite everything she has to offer him, he still "gave up on [her] like [she] was a bad drug." The narrator's self-esteem is shattered. She likens herself to a bad drug, something that must be avoided at all costs for it only brings ruin. She asks him, "Am I just something that ruins you? Do you feel inadequate because of how much I love you?"

The unfortunate thing is that he doesn't respond to her, so she's left "searching for signs in a haunted club," again tying into the "getting drunk" motif of the song. With every breakup, there's a need for closure, or an "authentic narrative to make sense of what happened." A closure helps clear all of the questions in a person's head and can be critical for allowing them to fully move on. We humans hate uncertainty—it's one of our most innate fears—and so, to force herself to be content, she looks for signs everywhere she looks. She asks, "Does he still love me? Can we be together again? What if I don't find anyone like him?"

Taylor continues by enumerating the things they shared together. The two of them shared songs and films, both in a literal and figurative way. Figuratively, they immortalized their love through songs of appreciation for each other (through poems, literary works, visual arts, and everything else in between) and in the films of the future they planned together. That alone is enough to make the narrator realize just how much she had to lose.

With the two of them, everything was easy. Hurdling obstacles only required communication and mutual compassion and understanding. She always believed that the relationship can survive anything. She was very secure and certain of him, but it turns out that the relationship could be so easily pulled from under her feet.

The next line has political undertones, but for this article, I'll only consider the romantic connotations. Here, Taylor sings that: "Our country, guess it was a lawless land." This can be interpreted as her saying that in the chaos of the world around them, their love was the one guiding their actions. When the world around them was falling apart, they held on to their love. In the lawlessness of their surroundings—amid all the hatred, bigotry, judgment, and everything else trying to tear them apart—their love was literally the law.

And so, when the love disappeared, so did the law that governed them, and the narrator realizes just how awful the world was around them. Being in love with her ex-lover made even the worst social issue seem tolerable because they can rely on each other. Now, the narrator knows she can only rely on herself without her lover as her home and rest.

This interpretation ties in nicely with the succeeding line where Taylor describes her ex-lover as someone who could literally soothe her fears with just the touch of his hand. This implies that the narrator had a more anxious disposition—in their relationship, she might've been the one to always be on the lookout for things that threaten the love. But every time she brought up her fears and anxieties before, her lover would hug her and whisper reassuring thoughts. Simply, her lover always reassured her, but now, she had to face the world all by herself.

In Verse 1, Taylor sang about why she was still writing pages of their love story. Here, in Verse 2, Taylor faces the hurt that followed her insistence on keeping the hope alive: paper cuts. Paper cuts are especially painful because they occur on our fingers which contain a lot of nerve endings. And so, even though the paper was inconsequential, the pain was real. In the same way, though the pages she was still writing might be reduced to mere wishful thinking, it doesn't erase the fact that it would still leave her hurting.

With the conclusion of Verse 2, Taylor again enumerates things that her lover had touched: "My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust."

Though she might be busy, the narrator says that she can give her time to him. Whatever she's doing is likely not as important as spending time with her lover, so she would drop it and be with him. This might also reference the song august where the persona said that she would keep waiting in case her lover would call, that wanting him was enough, and that in everything, she was living for the hope of it all.

"My wine" is an interesting word choice. Wine is often present in celebrations and in happy occasions, but it also shows up when things are rough and you might want just a drink or two. When Taylor gave her wine to her lover, she meant that in everything—whether good times or bad—she was always there beside him. In a way, this is also like New Year's Day's Verse 2, but with a tragic ending instead. Her support for and understanding of him was virtually limitless, he just needed to remain open to her.

In this song, the word "spirit" can be taken to refer to how his own presence invigorated her soul. He constantly inspired her and pushed her to be the best version of herself. When she thought that he deserved better than her, she pushes herself to become that "better version" (or Better Man). Being with him gave her the constant drive to reach for her dreams and achieve everything she ever wanted to achieve, knowing she'll always have his support and his love beside her.

And "trust" simply meant that she had faith in him. She believed in him and held the promises he made close to her heart. She trusted that in everything, he will fight for their relationship just as enthusiastically as she does.

Taylor ends Verse 2 with a poignant line. She had everything to give—all of her love, her body, her time, her attention—but it didn't stop him from leaving. And though it's a blatant lie, she tells herself that she'll be alright. After all, it's just a thousand cuts, right? Surely, you'd survive the ordeal. It might be her wishful thinking, and it might eventually come true in the future, but right now she knows she's just deluding herself.

This shit is gonna hurt, and it's gonna hurt her so badly.

Outro: Going back full circle

And so, Taylor repeats the chorus and goes back to a couple of lines in Verse 1. Again, Taylor asks the traffic lights if after all of these reeling, questioning, and remembering, will she eventually be alright?

But, as unfortunate as the traffic lights' answer may be, only time will tell. For now, the process of moving on will be a lengthy and grueling ordeal that can humble any person.

On a more positive note, it does however teach you valuable lessons that you can use to become a better person and a better lover.

Pain is what makes us human, and if the pain taught you something, then it wasn't all in vain.

Death By A Thousand Cuts

[The] human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. — Dead Poets Society

Love is truly a magical feeling, no? It inspires us to reach higher heights. It motivates us to become better people. It's the selflessness that comes with loving another person just as much as we love ourselves.

But sometimes, love can fail. Though it's a powerful feeling, it's not omnipotent. Humans change. Our priorities change. Our self-perception change. Our ideals, principles, and values change.

The discussion of love can't be considered without discussing the flip side of it: heartbreak. Even if it's such a repulsive concept, it does highlight just how important such a feeling is. When we go through pain and heartbreak, we find in ourselves the strength to change for the better.

Letting go of someone you want to build your future with is understandably a terrifying feeling. But always do remember: No matter how similar to Death By A Thousand Cuts your current situation is, the people you're meant to be with will always gravitate back to you, no matter how far they stray.