the same radio song that i heard years ago

Some songs are timeless. Not because they’re classic, but because they carry the version of you that doesn’t exist anymore.

I wasn’t expecting it.

Not on a regular weekday, not while learning how to switch lanes in the city I no longer romanticize. The afternoon sun was too loud, the road too crowded, and the radio too cruel.

They say music is the best time machine. Now that the same song resurfaces again – or even, heard again, it’s amusing, isn’t it?

I heard it again on the radio last week.

“If Ever You’re in My Arms Again.”

The same song that used to play in the background of so many ordinary, sweet days. Back when I thought things would stay that way forever.

It was during another driving lesson – engine humming, fingers tight on the steering wheel, eyes flickering between the rearview mirror and the sky. The city had just begun to exhale its 5 PM traffic, and I was stuck somewhere between the red light and memories I didn’t ask to remember.

That song used to mean nothing. Just a warm tune Mom hummed when she cooked dinner. Just something that played on the speakers of Dad’s car when he picked me up after school, his voice loud and cheerful, often off-key. My brother used to tease him for it. We’d all laugh.

Now, hearing it again felt like watching the same film with different people in the theater. And me – still sitting there, clutching a steering wheel like it could reverse time.

Everything is different now. My brother – watching from up above. Not from distance, but something lighter. The kind of silence that stays even when the room is full.

But the song? It goes on. Like it’s never heard of loss.

I guess it makes sense.

Music is made to stay.

People aren’t.

Maybe that’s why it hurts. Because the song should’ve aged too. It should’ve changed with the seasons like we did. But no, it stayed exactly the same. Same melody. Same chord. Same line about holding someone again. And me? I changed. The whole damn world did.

It’s logical, really – how sounds outlive flesh. How lyrics outlive conversations. I know that. I get it.

Sometimes I wish I wrote songs. I wish I had a voice, or a guitar, or a piano in a quiet room.

I loved music. Always did.

Why didn’t I try?

Why didn’t I write something back when everything was still warm? Still within reach?

Now I’m learning to drive. That’s what life has come to.

Learning how to move forward.

How to use mirrors to see what’s behind me.

How to check blind spots I didn’t know existed.

It’s strangely poetic, in a way I didn’t ask for.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s how we hold on to people who’ve left us – through the songs they loved, the ones they played on Sunday mornings or during long drives. The ones that somehow still live in the air between our ears.

I didn’t mean to cry that day. Not while learning how to switch lanes or read traffic signs. But the song made it impossible to stay in the present. It pulled me back – to living rooms filled with warm light and louder laughter. To my brother sitting by the speaker. To Grandpa sipping tea, eyes closed as if praying through a melody.

Funny how a tune can outlive the moments it once belonged to. How it can stitch together old lives with new ones, even when you no longer know how to sew. I kept driving. Tried not to cry. Tried not to crash. Tried not to wish for a time machine hidden beneath the pedals.

Still, I held onto it.

Because I don’t want to forget how it felt to be loved like that. To live in a house that smelled like garlic and jazz. To have a family that laughed loud and forgave quickly. That song reminds me that we were okay once. And that’s enough to keep driving. And actually, we’ll be okay either.

Maybe that’s part of growing up, too – realizing that not everything you love becomes something you do. And not everything that hurts needs to be fixed. Some things just… stay. In the form of a melody. In the backseat of your memories.

And me? I keep moving. Because that’s what maturing does to people.

You learn to choose yourself.

You learn to make decisions for your own good – even when they hurt. Even when you don’t have your sibling to laugh beside you or your grandpa to guide you with gentle hands. You drive forward. You fumble with gears. You cry on toll roads. But you keep going.

I can’t bring them back.

But I can bring the love forward.

So I let the song play. I let it sting. I let it remind me of who I was, and who I’m becoming. I don’t have a playlist that makes people remember me yet – but maybe, someday. For now, I choose the road. I choose the tears. I choose myself.

Because even if I’m the only one who hears my heart breaking at the sound of an old chorus –

I still deserve to heal.

(And maybe, that’s all I ever needed to carry forward.)

(A steering wheel. A song.

And the love that made me who I am.)