The word "void" is often used to describe something of emptiness giving the impression there is something supposed to be there. The void of self-actualization, the void of happiness, the void of something. The case for me in which I feel it profoundly that gave intensity towards my depression was the void of "understanding". It's very interesting how some philosopher resonates on the common idea of binding the act of suicide by means of confession that one no longer understands life. Their suffering is meaningless to them, nothing good can ever come out their suffering as they deem to believe that the suffering no longer hold any significance meaning, then why live another day just to suffer? Why don't just end it all now?
The void when it's filled, one would become "fulfilled" as there's literally less to no gap between one's void to what one desires. One has have everything one ever wanted. State of bliss. Through our experience and each to its own experience I grow to believe each of us has our own void. Void of belonging is to be relatively common. Void of self-actualization is also common as a lot of theory has been proposed that it is a must for one to have meaning, like maslow hierarchy of needs.
The significance of the need of the void to be filled is greatly a subjective experience as one can deem less necesarry to fill a certain void than others. Other can be single at their mid 30s and would like to stay as such while their friends are concerned. Under what reason that his friends are concern? The instinctive/subconscious act of mental projection of oneself towards the other? It's almost as if "Wow I surely can't imagine still being single at my mid 30s, yet this guy sure is indifferent, something wrong with this guy, I must help him."
So the only person that knows how great of an intensity of the void and how strong the need of the void to be filled is only oneself. Other people can say whatever the fuck they want, yet the end of the day the subjective experience and consequences of how the void influences the emotions of the self is completely up to that person with his own void in life.
It just so happen that-- I don't know I feel like I've been following orders in my life, getting told what to do when I don't think the commands are rational, it's only good for them but not for me, how come my parents are using an argument that I need to do things for the sake because they told me to instead of convincing me that it is also good for me? Getting projected into life to know that there are "other people" that knows better than me and thus I should follow their orders. How come life is so easy? Just follow what other people know and you'll never be sad forever, your life will forever be in an eternal bliss, everything is figured out now, there's nothing to be sad about. Let's not go to the Sigmund Freud path explaining how your experience growing up will greatly affect your personality as an adult, we can leave it as such for now.
The void that I happen to have is the void of "Understanding". I'm always troubled if I'm unable to see "What's the point of all these?" until I know "Oh they are sad because of X, well that's rational" then I could step it off and say It's okay.
It's almost as if since my condition is always projected me to do things as expected, without any "reasoning" why I must follow those orders, and through series of rebelious acts that rewards me neurobiologically, I began to enjoy critical thinking. "If this person say X is right, then I must prove X is right or other things that contradicts X to be wrong." You can see how this whole belief or ordeal can come into a very difficult situation when it is faced with things religion, I tried to postpone the critical thinking approach for a long time.
One of the great manifestation of this approach of critical thinking is when I exercise the same line of thought when i was in university. I was taught that the whole point of being enrolled in university is for us as students to be able to contribute value to humanity. They are pretty poetic with the whole being a student thing while every sober person knows they opt in for university for a greater chance of landing a job. But I took that speech on orientation camp very seriously and I thought to myself "Doesn't that imply that we can't contribute value without university or without the help from university?" The idea snowballed into something much greater from a hypothesis of idea to creating a whole fucking startup that does indeed contribute value to humanity. Critical thinking is fucking awesome.
The void of understanding why I'm enrolled in university were fulfilled. I'm able to remember how great the great days were. Oh we were working every fucking day of our lifes. I created so many things and ideas even prior to the succesful startup. I pitched those ideas and prototypes that were created through endless nights of creation and learning. I was also thinking "Yeah if at the end of the day, they put a premise of contributing value for humanity is through jobs, isn't what I'm doing as a mean to create a startup is a testimony of my ability to contribute value for humanity therefore it doesn't really backfire of the whole ordeal of university == GPA thing?" I remember I told this to my girlfriend at that time in which she is not in the same wavelength as me. She told me that trying to create a startup is a waste of time, "Your product is not entirely new". She proceeds to show my competitors that are alike my idea while I try to explain to her, "Yeah, even if that's the case, those things are only available in Europe and probably only fuckers with sheer amount of wealth are only accesible towards those devices. There are people here with heart conditions that needs those kind of device and I could create that!" She was not convinced, she thought that why bother at all, it's just going to waste my time and potential of acquiring the best GPA I could get because creating a startup will inevitably take a chunk of my time that I have to be very limited in university. I mean my university is well known for its suicide cases and very high bar of qualification. It just doesn't make sense for her why pursue something harder when I'm obviously struggling to get my GPA good at university as the courses demands my time.
The void of understanding by means of her understanding me and support me through my journey were unfulfilled. Yet the void of self-actualization by means of pursuing creative works and solving abstract problems that will help a lot of humans shrieks for a greater calling to move my veins than the void of wanting her to support me. I was alone at that time, everyone that I talked about my idea with thought that I'm wasting my time. "Did you really buy those wires and breadboard just before coming to this class? What a waste of time." No one really understand me but I really believe on my idea, something of beautiful value that lies in the future over a belief that I can actually make it moves my veins than the desire to be understand by my friends.
I was alone at that time. Watching some tutorials about the basics of electric circuits, figuring out C, watching tutorials on how to use the ESP32 Bluetooth module. All of these are new to me, I didn't have the prerequisites courses to make do of these things. It was always just me and the void of self-actualization crying to be actualized. It wasn't actually as sad as I phrase it metaphorically, but it was just something of a beautiful sensation that drove me. See the thing with the void of actualization, it may never be actualized and that's the good thing. It may never be actualized but at least acknowledging the existence of the void carves a path towards the actualization, and for years building that startup, every step that my feet takes were supported on a ever floating cloud by the idea of self actualization that can be actualized. The end goal is never as important as the journey. The end goal is just an end goal, the journey towards it, it's what worth crying.
It's just a shame that one day the clouds were no longer there. I stripped it all away and my startup went to a place with no return. Trust were broken. There are simply no glue-ing together back now. I have become a monster that destroy it all. We were making so much money and I dumped it all on my naiveness that I could make more money because I was performing good historically at a leveraged contracts financial instruments. I was actually doing good until my ego was on cloud 9 and I felt like there's nothing wrong with insurmountably adding to the position. It was confirmation bias and recency bias at it's finest.
The consequences of the action of actually removing all the company's money was greatly underappreciated prior to when I took the action to wire the company's bank account. Did I not think about how my peers would feel were the worst to happen? "Yeah but nothing bad will happen." I say. The most fucking ironic thing was that I actually fucking doubled the money initially and I remember there were an instance that I thought "Oh I no longer need the company's money, I can actually wire it back now." But my heavily retarded self whispers "Yeah but more leverage means more money to be made." And I subdued to the one of greatest temptations of mankind, the temptation of greed.
Historically, greed has been a major problem in human history, it brought the rise and fall of civilization. There's even a whole philosophy and religion based on this belief. "The desire to not desire" as the buddhist would say. "Less is more" shit like that.
As the price goes at my liquidation point I felt like my soul has been lifted away from me. The spirit of the creation of the startup and all has vaporized into thin air. I have quite frankly, betrayed all my previous grounding philosophy of the startup that I have built. The meaning of life that was placed to become an useful human being as much as I possibly could. The void of self actualization grows bigger as now my current state is straying further from it. Only until the void of self actualization becomes bigger than myself that it consumes me whole. This is the point where I questioned myself, "Why do I do all of these things that I've been doing?" The experiences of passion towards this project, the faces of my peers that I have betrayed, I was their fucking leader, they put their trust on me. The time that they spent on building these technology with me, I stripped it away out of the false belief of I could make more money in this part-time hobby and everybody will be happy as the startup will now more have money due to my skills. The want of doing good now backfires out of my lack of competency of being good at the thing I thought I was good at.
I couldn't help but to hate my most recent self for having done destruction of what I have built for 3 years. The time we bonded together to built this thing, they will never trust me again after this reckless mistake. "FUCK HOW DO I TURN BACK TIME?" "CAN THERE BE POSSIBLY ANYTHING GOOD THAT COULD COME OUT OF THIS?" "WHY WOULD GOD LET THIS HAPPEN?" "HAS THERE BEEN ANY SIGN FROM GOD THAT THIS WAS ACTUALLY PREVENTABLE?" "WHAT DO I DO NOW?" "MY PARENTS MONEY WERE ALSO INVOLVED. I AM FUCKED." The first few days after the incident was not as a grave danger to myself comparatively to the following week. It's almost feels unreal that "Fuck what do I tell to my people now? (startup)" then I told them that I need a break due to some mental problem that I am not feeling well. I lied. Then there's this whole lie on top of lies. I hate lying yet I have to lie! They can't find out about the truth! They will hate me for what I've done! They will never want to work with me ever again! Why did I do the things I do?!
These whole judgement about the self and the trust to make anymore decision greatly clouded me. "Is this really what I've been all doing? Nurturing trust to other people and tore it all down?" "Did I not think of how they would feel?" "I'm unworthy of being their leader." "I'm a sick man. I walk around, asking people if they want to be involved with my project and convinced them that it will be worth their while and just to betray the trust that they have given me?" The sheer intensity of conscience has greatly collapsed on me. I was almost killed by own personal philosophy that stems out of conscience just to turn on me and say "Fuck you, you did not live up to your own standards, what are you?" I'm the fucking worst. How can people walk around in places nurture other people trust just to ruin it as if it was nothing to begin with? They were comitted to the whole thing and I fucking shred it all away. That's what I was feeling.
Then depersonalization happens. The accumulation of lies, agony, and regret piles more for every moving days. The earlier days were funnier in hindsight when I remember I thought to myself "Fuck I need to make money now in hope they won't realize, should I work at McDonalds in the mean time?" Then I realized the amount of money to recover doesn't fucking make sense even if I work at McDonalds for years! "FUCK ARE THERE REALLY NO WAY GOING OUT OF THIS SITUATION? I HATE MYSELF!" The void of self-actualization grows at an ever increasing pace. The void of belonging as I felt much more distant to the people that I used to feel I belong with also grows. I tried to talk about this with my ex girlfriend, the same person who didn't believe in my idea but she was the closest person to me that knows the history of my startup and how succesful it was at it's peak, one of the greatest commendable achievement is the startup brilliance brought me to compete on a higher state in Switzerland, fully paid vacation! Anyway, I talked to her but she shows disinterest, she looks waaaay to bothered to listen to my problem, it's as if she knows that I'm at fault. I am at fucking fault, then she shows that she is troubled as if giving the impression "Why the fuck this guy thought I have the solution to his problem?" My brother in christ, I don't expect you to have the solution, I just for once, want to be listened about this problem and can you please for once show that you at least don't have 100 things to do inside your head as it appear at your facial expression? That didn't work out as now the words from her rang inside my head when I first opened up about my depression even before this incident that she said "When we enter to be in a relationship, we have our own emotional baggage to carry." And I realized, fuck of course she is not interested, it's my emotional baggage to carry not hers! But she's the only one who knows the context best that is not involved with this whole ordeal! Fuck!
With this very bad belief of my own emotional baggage to carry I began to believe that it is indeed my own emotional baggage to carry. Until the baggage itself gets heavier each moving days to the point I feel that the baggage full of guilt, regret, self-hate, self-disgust even, self-hate that resolves into self-destruction becomes more than I could bear. Depersonalization was intense, I couldn't even familiarize myself at the mirror anymore, "Is this the same person who has brought destruction and unhappiness to the people that he loved the most?" I was experiencing what I believe to be best described as "The inability to be myself". It's fucking over in the most ironic way. The depersonalization that comes with tearing one's heart off. The ability to love another person as means of my team that we have grow trust within each other that backfires me of the belief that I have betrayed their trust to the point that there's nothing else anymore. There's simply nothing. Depression as severe the description describe to be. The flatline of dopamine. The brain's lack of interest to have any motivation to even sustain the most mundane of all activities. Eating has become a no dopamine activity, listening to songs that I used to like has become a no dopamine activity, watching anime that I used to like has become a no dopamine activity. Life has become as distinguished black and white as my brain perceived to be. "Oh... What have I become...?" The escalation of this goes pretty fast, almost as if I were to describe to be "Dangerously fast." The sustaining links that has made me happy for all my life has been stripped away. Now the void of self-actualization has become too big and too deep to the point there are extreme pressure in the form of self-alienation through depersonalization. "What is it that I want to become anymore?"
Depersonalization that gave me a reason to cry and cry even more of what I have become. I couldn't trust my feelings anymore. I felt so indifferent. I cry myself to sleep a lot of times. Even waking up the first instance that I thought about my mistakes, I cry again. Why must living hurt so much...? Is it the consequences of pursuing the whole ideal of my self actualization? Is this the consequences of prolonged exposure of trust, compassion, passion, and love towards a thing that just suddenly collapsed within myself? Are all of these feelings human at all or I have become something less?
I did not want to believe that I am something less. I want to still believe that I am still human. "Does anybody experience what I am experiencing at all?" "If that is the case, then how come everyone looks so happy and as if they don't have any problem that brought them to this ugliness of feelings? How come people don't commit suicide? Is it because they are able to see the good in tomorrow in which I can't? Tomorrow is just going to have more lies and suffering..."
The voices now appears. The feeling of self-hate is now much more than a mere feeling but a more real thing. Internal dialogues now grow more intense and vivid in my head. "You fucking done that and now we are at point of no return!" "You are a terrible human being!" "How come you done that!" "Did you not have any human emotions at all?! Think about the people that have trusted you!" The infliction of pain towards oneself now become reasonable as a mean to end the voices and vivid internal dialogues. As a way to juke the brain of "Real" pain comparatively to mental pain. It was such a wicked experience...
Each passing days now bear more suffering as the perpetual cycle of self-hate grows more stronger and I fail to reason with it. The cuts become to be more deep and deep by means of the necesseties to numb the mental pain that I'm having. I reached out to people and no one seems want to listen. They are oh so busy with their own things. The void of belonging now grows ever stronger as it crushes me. "You don't belong in this world, you are too different than the other, you are a defect, an outlier, something that shouldn't exist, honestly what will you even do after this? Nurture trust so you can tear it again? Your parents money that you have burnt through your reckless decision? Do the world a favor and kill yourself. The world will be much better without your existence."
Now eating has become not just a no dopamine activity, rather a net negative experience. "Why do I keep living?" "I'm a terrible and wicked man for what've done. I have nothing to be proud of. Certainly if I were to be positioned as my peers in my startup I would hate me!" I cried on the side of the road with these thoughts. It was always me and my void of self actualization now beating me up until there's nothing left of me. Oh how far I've fallen. "I shouldn't have talked to those people, they have put their trust on me and I have ruined it away... I'm a wicked human being." I kept holding the razor everytime I go and thinking whether I could bear more of these suffering tomorrow. It's almost as if these people that I see where I walk, would it even matter if I die today? No one seems to care enough to the point that they ask how I was doing? Do they care at all how am I doing? Is my departure from the world even of something significance to them? Why does no one wants to listen to me?
One night I felt it was too much suffering that I could bear, I done the thing I did not think I ever do. Which is to call the suicide prevention hotline. It was a voluntary group that showed on the first page of google search. "Ya... Hallo...?" A really soft voice answered my call "Yeah so... um... ah..... Do you want to listen to my problems...?" As I broke down crying at the first sentence I spoke of. For the first time ever the void of belonging shrinks out of the belief that finally someone devoted their time to listen to me. Of course I'm being heavily melodramatic but you may never really understand how I feel but it the most melodramatic way, the phone call means the world to me. I stutter a lot on the call, my thoughts were incoherent, my breathing were unsteady. "Yeah.... I don't know if I can live anymore... I've done a grave mistake that I shouldn't have ever done...' Accounting that they are total strangers, I felt that it's totally fine to open up my vulnurabilities and shame. I bear a lot of great shame coming out of my mistakes. I explained to her the whole ordeal as I could hear the surprise from her voice how much money I've lost and the whole tale of broken trust and passion that is lost in the process. "I don't know the pain is now too great for me to handle... I don't know if I could fix this, It's unfixable in my opinion, I've done this and I now serve the great amount of pain that I deserve for what I've done." In which she says quoting on The Inability which was written in 8th of July 2022 as a better staple than now
“It is not your fault, don’t drag all of this on you. Trust me, even though I’m a stranger, as a human being, I care about you, and I want you to continue to live. I promise you that this will pass, you will come out of this a stronger person.
It is not your fault but you take it all on you, it is beginning to be too much to handle for your own good, I know you hated yourself because of this but please remember that it is not your fault.”
Oh yeah that's also because I asked her prior "Why do you care about all these?" As a mean to my own skeptic belief that why would anyone at this strange point of time in my life suddenly cares about my problem in which I never get to experience. It's almost as if for me it's too good to be true. I was obviously heavily clouded by my depression and sheer intense hate towards myself that I couldn't see beyond what truly has happened over the sheathe of my own self-hate. My parents eventually forgive me as my mom grows in sheer amount of panic when she saw my scars. The void of belonging shrinks ever smaller to the point is negligible.
The episodes of panic attacks did not stop at a certain fixed point rather on a gradual decline. I became a more conscious person when it comes with human relationships afterwards. Quite frankly I could admit that that experience really did me change as a person, for the better or worse. I am quite far sentimental when it comes to emotions in general. I'm not sure if I like it that way. I sometimes still wish that I am not as gravely sad when I'm sad. I sometimes still wish that I did not have such stressful experience to the point that it now has a gateway towards the sensations as if my sadness are now greatly amplified over the things that are not even correlated to my prior accident, yet I still feel "Abnormally Sad" or "Irrationally Sad" at times.
I have become also a more intensely philosophical person after that time. I read philosophical books for the initial reason of cope that what I'm feeling is not because I am less human, a defect, rather than out of hope maybe if another person whether to be subjugated on a similiar experience, maybe they will break as much as I have been broken mentally.
There were another suicide prevention hotline call that i greatly remember when he said "Yeah but all these feelings, are actually coming out conscience, out of your good heart, the ability to tell what is right and what is wrong. You know what you've done is wrong and now you feel regret. At the other side, you can done all of these things and not feel any regret in which in that case you don't have any conscience." The whole theme of the void of belonging gets more fulfilled and fulfilled each time I feel understood.
The void of belonging is an ever aching problem in the human condition. The theme of self alienation, the problem that comes with self alienation and depersonalization. The whole reason on how people come to reason suicide. The void of belonging really is to be one of the strongest void that exists in our own hearts. As it could give great pleasure and bring self-destruction.
I've been troubled in the past. I didn't know if I belong. I didn't know if my feelings were quite a human one to have. I was sad and I didn't know if it's "normal" to be this sad. There's simply no way for me to be able to tell for certain. Only through assumptions and abstraction of proposed theory of the human condition I can at least grasp that maybe it is normal out of my ability as a human to have conscience. Maybe it is true that other people that is subjugated through my experience will be sad. Maybe I am human. I am human.