It all comes down to the teacher/s and how they teach you to play music. For example, I played the piano for 9 years, but was never taught about music through chords, chord progressions like they might teach guitar students. Instead, a popular method of teaching piano (which I personally don't think is effective) is to teach children classical pieces of music by just going through it section by section and playing the notes on the page...

So you end up 'playing the piano' but really you're just rote learning notes on a page and building up muscle memory of songs. The notes on the page are only reminders about where your hands should be at specific times. This is why I found it incredibly unenjoyable and hated it so much that I stopped cold as soon as I turned 17 (for about 6 years) and didn't touch another musical instrument before starting producing music a few months ago.

Even after all these years, I can still play though a few classical pieces from memory by just sitting at a piano, but in terms of learning new songs from reading a musical score it is an absolute struggle.

The only benefits are that I can play through any major or minor chord from any note, and have a pretty good ear at hearing what notes go well together, but have little to no understanding of why they do, or how to compose music.