Instructions for Leaving Yourself Behind

1- Begin by standing still.

Feel the weight of your name, your face, your history—how it clings to your shoulders like a coat you’ve outgrown. Notice how it itches. Notice how it pulls.

2- Breathe until your ribs creak.

Let the air stretch you from the inside, as if you were making space for a stranger who has yet to arrive.

3- Find a mirror.

Do not search for beauty, or for truth. Look for the fractures where you’ve already begun to slip away. Those cracks are doors.

4- Speak aloud the names you once answered to.

Childhood nicknames. Titles earned or imposed. Names whispered only in secrecy. Let each syllable echo, then dissolve. Step into the silence that follows.

5- Write a letter to the person you used to be.

Do not promise to return. Simply say thank you. Fold the letter once. Burn it carefully, and watch the smoke climb like a prayer you will not pray.

6- Empty your pockets.

Find the receipts, the keepsakes, the crumbs of lives you thought you’d need to carry. Leave them in a neat pile at the crossroads. Someone else will mistake them for treasure.

7- Take off your shoes.

Walk barefoot across the floor of your own silence. Let the dust remind you of what you’ve already shed, what is waiting to be shed still.

8- Light a candle.

Not for worship, but for witness. Watch the flame lean, flicker, insist. Let it remind you that you too are allowed to flare, to dwindle, to vanish into smoke.

9- Gather your masks.

The ones you wore to be liked, to be safe, to be legible. Stack them gently. Thank them. Then place them in a box and leave it at the edge of the forest.

10- Walk to the locked rooms in your chest.

Turn the key. See the younger versions of you, sitting in the dark. Kiss their foreheads. Tell them it is time. Close the door, but do not lock it.

11- Hold your old self like a child.

Tell them they were brave. Tell them they were enough. Then place them gently into the arms of memory, and step back.

12- Wash your hands.

As if cleansing yourself of ghosts. Feel the water run over your skin like release. Do not dry them. Let them air out, empty, clean.

13- Open a window.

Let the night in. Let the wind dismantle the stale air. Notice how it moves the curtains, how it cools your skin. Call this permission.

14- Speak the truths you swallowed.

Whisper them into the room. Even if no one hears. Especially if no one hears. Each unspoken word becomes lighter once carried by the air.

15- Walk through a doorway without looking back.

Do not measure what is lost. Do not measure what is waiting. The act itself is the offering.

16- Break something small.

A cup, a twig, a stone. Watch how it falls apart. Learn that endings do not destroy the world.

17- Choose one belonging you cannot keep.

A shirt, a photograph, a trinket. Bury it. Let the soil finish holding what you cannot.

18- Stand under the night sky.

Find a star that blinks like a pulse. Pretend it belongs to the self you are leaving. Wave goodbye.

19- Step forward.

One breath. One heartbeat. One bare foot on the earth. Feel the space where the weight used to be.

20- Do not rush to fill it.

Let the emptiness be a room. A threshold. A beginning.