There’s a void in my chest Where hope used to be, Scrolling news feeds Without hearing a thing. Round and around, and around I spin, Wishing and hoping for A reason to live, A song that gives What silence never did. Oooh... Yeah, remove all that aches within. I leave the ache behind, All the shadows in my mind. What is left of me, But a stranger with red-tinged eyes? What is left of me? What is left of me? What is left of me? I made it a game To knock out the pain, Like laughing it off Could lessen the cost. Round and around, and around I look, Finding I buried My reason to live, The strength that gives What silence never did. Oooh... I leave the ache behind, All the shadows in my mind. What is left of me, But a stranger with red-tinged eyes? What is left of me? What is left of me? What is left of me? Step one... Leave. Step two... Forget. Step three... Don't... look back. I left that ache behind, But the moment I cut those ties, What is left of me, Is a stranger with red-tinged eyes. What is left of me? What is left of me? (What is left of me?) Story: When Owen first found the book, he almost threw it away. It was plain gray cloth, untitled, with no author and no explanation. Inside, there was only one sentence: Leave through the back door. It seemed ridiculous, but grief has a way of making ordinary people bargain with extraordinary things. He hadn't really been living anyway. His days blurred together—scrolling headlines without reading them, eating meals he couldn't taste, replaying conversations that had ended months ago. So the next morning, instead of leaving through the front door like he always did, he walked out the back. Nothing happened. Or so he thought. The next day there was another instruction. Then another. Throw away something you've kept out of guilt. Take a different route home. Don't answer the first time someone says your name. Forget one story you keep telling yourself. None of them seemed magical. If anything, they sounded like advice from a therapist who had grown tired of speaking in complete sentences. Slowly, his life became easier. The ache in his chest loosened. He laughed more. He slept through the night. Friends told him he seemed lighter, healthier, more like himself. They were wrong. The changes were so small he never noticed them happening. Every instruction removed a little pain, but it also removed the reason that pain had existed. The old coffee mug wasn't just a mug—it was Sunday mornings with someone he had loved. The voicemail wasn't just a recording—it was the last time he'd heard his father's voice. When he let those things go, the grief disappeared... but so did the warmth attached to it. Months passed before he caught his own reflection in a train window and hesitated. The face looking back was his. The eyes were his. Yet there was something quietly unfamiliar about the man standing there. He couldn't remember the last song that had made him cry. He couldn't remember why he had once loved his ex-wife. He couldn't remember what had hurt enough to make him pick up the book in the first place. The final page contained only three instructions. Leave. Forget. Don't look back. He smiled as he closed the cover. For the first time in years, there was no pain left inside him. Standing in the mirror that night, he realized there wasn't much else left either. The stranger staring back had his face. He simply wasn't him anymore.
