There is an emptiness that pervades the very base of reality and existence itself.  If you take the materialist approach of a worldview you come to discover reality is not what it seems.  We live in a world where there is a certainty amongst objects and discrete beings.  Upon further examination this view falls apart be it in physical space or the abstract world our species maintains. 

An atom is primarily composed of empty space, the matter that is present is a small fraction of what makes the atom itself.  Instead, things like probability, fields, orbits, and locations are the composite parts that allow us to say this atom is hydrogen or helium etc. 

So too, upon further inspection, the core components that compose our identities are primarily empty and are instead made up of smaller composite parts.  Yet these parts are not discrete objects or notions of selfhood, instead they are instances of behavior, action, and time. 

It’s actually pretty fucking depressing to sit in your home, alone, with only absence to be filled.  It leaves a deep desirous longing to become something other than what is.  This is the trick of the void, that it must be filled, that it cannot be in and of itself, that it is an insatiable maw that must be engaged with. 

What I am telling you is it doesn’t.

As I began my journey to the core of selfhood I had to engage with the void two fold, on the one hand I had to eschew all identifiers is held close to me, that I was attached to keeping; on the other hand, I had to allow identification with everything I encountered that was spit from the void. 

This emptiness was the enemy for a long time, the idea that there was no substance beneath the abstract, nothing to provide the certainty of definition beneath language, no way for me to reasonable battle and win against this enemy.  In the unillumed darkness of the trenches I found myself in all those years ago, one thing has stuck with me.  No, not the faggy shit nor the agro shit, these are but parts, what really stuck with me was the profound sense of emptiness.

This “profound” realization offers only two reactions, acceptance or denial, and I can assure you denial ultimately leads to acceptance, just in a bit of a beat you into submission type of way.  The emptiness does not leave and can not be abated if it is not accepted for what it is, which is simply what is. 

I won’t bore you with the madness of the stories of how I tried to prove this otherwise, maybe another time, what I will tell you is, it is not an easy journey or task to discover this offensive truth of existence but when you do, and you really come to accept it as is, the freedom you find is unparallel.

If my experience means anything, the freedom you find when you accept the reality of an absence beneath the surface cannot become itself without first recognizing a deep interconnected nature of existence.  I can say honestly I did not make it out of the void, the absence, the emptiness alone.  No, my escape was instead an operation of many different players and tethers to the shared reality we must exist in, even if I couldn’t see it at the time.  I tried my best to do it on my own, trust me I did, but even in the most stubborn identities I had to accept a reality where the existence of this void was truth. 

Now, some time removed from the darkest of explorative endeavors, I see this emptiness never goes away.  I am met with it in every decision I make.  Once the veil of reality has been lifted it cannot be reapplied.  Again, it can only be accepted and when I accept this emptiness at the base of reality I am given the freedom to fill it in with whatever I choose.