A couple of weekends ago, I found myself going back to my childhood, listening to OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). I can still remember sitting on my bed with the cassette tape cover spread out in front of me, reading the lyrics as the songs played.
As I listened to those songs again, I realized something. What they meant to me then isn’t what they mean to me now. Yes, I’m older, but it wasn’t even that. I don’t think I ever truly understood the words. Or maybe I did, but I understood them outwardly instead of inwardly.
That day felt like I was rediscovering old friends. I was reminiscing about the past while learning something completely new in the present.
A couple of days later, I created a station on Apple Music starting with one of OMD’s songs so it would introduce me to similar music. Once again, it felt like I was rediscovering old friends.
Then a song came on that stopped me in my tracks.
“Only You” by Yaz.
I hadn’t heard it in forever. In fact, I’m not even sure I really remembered it. It just felt… familiar.
I was only seven years old when it became a hit, so I probably heard it on one of those late-night 80s compilation commercials. I finished listening to it, but for some reason I needed to hear it again. Actually, it wasn’t that I needed to hear it.
I needed to feel it.
Over the past year, one of the only things I’ve truly splurged on was a great pair of headphones. They don’t just let me listen to music—they let me be inside it.
So I put them on, started the song over, leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes.
The song begins with a simple synthesizer and a soft tapping. Then the melody slowly unfolds, and Alison Moyet’s voice begins:
“Looking from a window above… it’s like a story of love… can you hear me?”
The moment those words began, a vision unfolded behind my closed eyes.
I saw every version of myself.
The little girl.
The teenager.
The young adult.
The woman I became.
They moved in and out of one another, weaving effortlessly together. Some of them I immediately recognized. Others felt like strangers.
They glided through the melody in slow motion, and as they passed one another, their fingertips gently touched.
I remember thinking,
Wait… why are they all me?
I tried replacing their faces with people I had loved throughout my life, but it didn’t work.
They remained…
only me.
As I continued watching, something caught my attention.
Just a flicker.
I followed it upward.
Above every version of myself was a light.
But in that moment, I knew it wasn’t just light.
It was me.
My soul.
It was gently moving every version of me in and out of one another, almost like Geppetto guiding Pinocchio with invisible strings. Each version flowed together just as the synthesizer flowed effortlessly through the melody.
Then the lyrics echoed through me:
“All I needed was the love you gave…
All I needed for another day…
And all I ever knew… only you.”
As the dance continued, tears streamed down my face.
With every beat of the synthesizer, I could feel my heart expanding—wider, fuller, softer—as every version of myself slowly came together.
One by one, the invisible strings intertwined above me until my soul became the final thread, weaving every broken version of myself into one.
This version.
The woman sitting in that chair.
Me.
My soul wasn’t showing me someone I needed to become.
It was gently piecing together every version of me that had ever existed, like glue mending something that had never truly been lost—only separated.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I was meeting myself.
Not the version that performed.
Not the version that earned love.
Not the version that tried to become what everyone else needed.
Just…
me.
Beautiful.
Whole.
Authentic.
That song gave me something I didn’t know I had been searching for.
It helped me understand that I was never missing another person.
I was missing myself.
And in that moment, I realized something the lyrics had been trying to tell me all along.
All I needed was the love I gave.