Fırtınam

There are songs I like, songs I remember, and songs that somehow become part of me. Fırtınam belongs to the last group.

I do not remember the first time I heard it. Maybe that is why it feels as if it has always been there. Some songs enter your life at a certain moment and remain connected to that memory. This one is different for me. It has followed me through different years, different places and different versions of myself.

Every time I hear it, something inside me becomes quiet.

The song begins with loneliness, but not the peaceful kind. It is the loneliness of someone who is already on the road, someone who knows he has to continue even though part of him would rather stay. There is no crowd around him, no promise that things will become easier. There is only a long road and the knowledge that it has to be walked.

I understand that feeling more now than I did when I was younger.

There are moments in life when nobody can walk a certain distance for you. People can love you, support you and stand beside you, but there are roads that remain yours alone. You carry your memories, your mistakes, your fears and the things you were never able to say.

Then you keep walking.

What hurts me most in Fırtınam is not simply the idea of leaving. It is the weakness hidden inside someone who is trying to leave. He is already tired, already hurt, and still asks not to be hurt again.

I think we all reach that point eventually.

There are times when you can handle almost anything, and there are times when one small word is enough to break you. People looking from outside may not understand the difference. They only see the final moment. They do not see everything that came before it.

Maybe strength is not always standing without shaking.

Sometimes strength is admitting that you are shaking and still taking another step.

The images of snow, sun and water also stay with me. They feel like different ways of surrendering. Snow cannot fight the sun forever. Water cannot remain still when it has somewhere to go. Some things in life move toward their ending no matter how much we want to stop them.

People do too.

We change.

We leave cities, houses, friendships and relationships. We leave old versions of ourselves behind. Sometimes we choose to go, and sometimes life makes the decision for us.

But leaving does not mean that everything leaves with you.

Certain people remain.

They become part of the weather inside us.

That is what the word fırtınam means to me. Not simply someone you love, but someone who has enough power to change the entire landscape inside you. They can be far away. They can belong to another time. They may not even know what place they still have in your memory.

Yet something moves when you remember them.

A storm does not need permission.

It arrives.

Maybe that is why this song has stayed with me for so long. It understands something I find difficult to explain: sometimes the strongest feelings are not loud. A person can continue with life, work, laugh, make plans and appear completely fine while carrying an old storm somewhere inside.

Nobody sees it.

Then a song begins.

And suddenly the years between today and another time disappear.

You are not stronger, older or wiser for those few minutes. You are simply the person who once felt everything without knowing how to protect himself from it.

I think music has a strange ability to find that person.

Fırtınam always finds mine.

Perhaps that is why it is my favorite song.

Not because it makes me happy.

Not because it makes me sad either.

It reminds me that some feelings do not need to be solved. They do not need an explanation, a happy ending or even another person to understand them.

They only need somewhere to live.

Some of mine live in this song.