Songfacts®:

• This song describes different stories of abuse. It was inspired in part by accounts Smith heard of bullied teens committing suicide around the country and also by a friend of the singer's who had been sexually abused in the church years previously. Smith told Caitlin R King of The Associated Press: "I came out on my deck one night, extremely emotional thinking about all that, and I sat down, wrote all the music and the chorus lyrically."
  
  Smith added that he believes it's important to keep these issues in the foreground. "Not talking about it and covering it up with addictions for years, I don't believe those individuals will ever come into a really fulfilled life until they deal with the pain and invite God into the pain and be able to come to a place where they can not only forgive themselves, but forgive those who have abused them," he said.
• Smith wrote this song with bass guitarist and songwriter Tommy Sims, who has also worked with Bruce Springsteen, Michael Bolton, Amy Grant and Kelly Clarkson amongst others. Sims also co-wrote Eric Clapton's "Change The World," which won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1997.
• Smith told the story of the song: "I've had several of my friends confess about them being abused before, which I think was part of the inspiration, but I think that the biggest inspiration for the song, which broke my heart, was that girl that moved here from Ireland, and she got brutally ridiculed and bullied and bullied and bullied every day. One day she said, 'I just can't take it,' went home and hung herself. I remember going to the house. The kids had a bunch of people over and I was in a funk, and I kept thinking about all of it. I took the guitar and walked out back and in five minutes wrote 'Leave' on the guitar. Then I pulled Tommy Sims in. I said, 'Go down to the depths and give me something.' I played him the song on guitar. I already had the chorus, 'I just wanna leave,' and he was going 'Yeah.' He calls me Smithsonian. I call him 'Cous.' I said let me just throw a little thing down for you, I'll give you a little template. So he's on the couch behind me, I'm not even on the computer 20 minutes. And he says, 'What do you think about this?' He already had the lyric. In 20 minutes." (Source Jesusfreakhideout.com)