Prompt – A time you wanted to be younger again.
The piano opened first with a simple and steady melody, like someone knocking softly on a door they were not sure was the correct one. It felt hesitant and determined at the same time, as if grief and hope agreed to share the same bench and the same keys. The singer did not arrive with rockstar swagger, but like a sinner entering a confessional. His voice carried a tremor that lived just behind the note, a thin crack that told the truth long before the lyrics did. There was a pleading quality there. Not begging. Just longing for a different outcome than the one that already felt written.
The drums slid in, not loud, not dramatic, simply present like a heartbeat that remembered it had work to do. The song continued to build without rushing. Each layer came in carefully, the guitar weaving around the piano like hands trying to help without making things worse. Nothing in the mix tried to show off. Everything served the ache.
How to Save a Life played on the radio on my way out of Japan as Holly drove me toward the airport in April of 2007. The world felt both too big and too small at the same time. With my bags packed and goodbyes said too quickly, it felt like a chapter was closing without the dignity of a final paragraph. I did not know then how much that song would follow me, like a ghost that refused to leave the room.
There was a part of me that wanted to be younger in that moment. Younger and untouched back in 1999. Younger and unaware back in 1999. I wanted the version of life where choices did not echo so loudly, where leaving did not feel like breaking something inside my own chest. That quiet piano line carried the weight of questions I did not have the courage to ask. What could have been different? What should have been done or not done? What part of myself was I leaving behind without realizing it? What I was carrying with me “home”?
The song did not offer comfort. It did not fix anything. It simply sat beside me, naming the ache I could not yet name. As the chorus rose, I realized that some moments mark a before and an after. In that moment, I wanted to be younger. I wanted to be back in 1999 when I arrived in Japan, when mistakes felt smaller and outcomes did not carry so much weight. I wanted to be less worn out by the world and more untouched by loss. It was not nostalgia. It was grief disguised as wishing.
When the chorus lifted, it felt like someone replaying a conversation in their mind, hoping that if the words repeated long enough, the past might loosen its grip. The music did not save anything. It stayed and witnessed the silence between notes to speak the parts that hurt the most. By the end, the repetition became prayer and punishment at once. If only. If only. If only. The piano never stopped. It kept moving forward, even when the voice sounded like it might not. That was the tender cruelty. Time kept going. The song kept going. The loss remained.
And still, something else lived there too. A quiet thread of hope, not loud, not heroic, not cinematic. Just the steady recognition that I was still here. That the ache did not erase the love of Japan and my time there had indeed been real. That leaving did not cancel the life that had been lived. Inside that ache, a stubborn spark refused to vanish. It was not redemption and not resolution. It was the fragile belief that naming the truth, even when it hurt, could keep me from turning numb.
Maybe growing older does not steal everything. Maybe it gives language to feelings that once lived unnamed in the dark, and maybe that language makes the weight lighter to carry. Not gone. Not fixed. Simply held with more honesty and a little more gentleness.
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Muddled Soma 