The Void

The void isn’t some big dramatic thing.
She doesn’t come crashing through the door or scream in your face. She’s quieter than that. She waits until you’re tired enough to listen.

For me, she found me in a hospital room.
Three weeks after back surgery — a full disc replacement. My incision was infected. My marriage was falling apart. My career was gone. Everything that had ever given me identity was just… stripped away.

I was curled up in a fetal position on that hard hospital bed. My body was shaking, and my mind was just… done. My now-ex-wife had brought me a fresh bottle of Benadryl from Costco. Two hundred count. The night before, I’d taken two of them just to try and get some sleep. So, I knew. I knew there were one hundred and ninety-eight left.

That number just sat in my head.
One-nine-eight.

I remember staring at that bottle and realizing that my tomorrow didn’t exist anymore. Not in some poetic way — like actually, gone. I couldn’t see past that night. It was like one of those movie scenes where a character opens a door expecting another room, but a storm has ripped off the whole side of the building. You open it, and there’s nothing. Just air, wind, and gravity. That was my tomorrow.

And she was there—the void.
Not some monster, not some ghost.
Just that soft voice that knew all the right words.
She said, Come here, baby. You can rest now. You’ve done enough. Everyone’s going to be better without you.

And the thing is — I believed her.
Because when you’re that exhausted, her lies sound a lot like love.

I lay there, trying to decide which way I was gonna go.
Do I get up and grab the pills, or do I press the call button?
That was it. Two options.

I had my finger on that red button for twenty, maybe thirty minutes.
Just hovering.
Because the void was patient, she didn’t rush me. She wanted me to think it through. All the while whispering her comforting lies.

And then I looked down.

Across the room, there’s this little whiteboard that every hospital room has — the one the nurse’s aide writes on. The day before, my girls had come to visit. They’d doodled on it. Little stick figures of them and me — “Dad” with his goofy smile — hearts and stars and a few crooked letters that said, Love you, Daddy.

That’s what I was staring at.
Four stick figures. Four little lights in the dark. Fayla. Cosette. Everly. Esmae.

And I just broke. Because I realized I couldn’t do that to them.
I couldn’t make them live as victims of silence..

So I pressed the button.

The speaker clicked, and a voice came through, all cheerful, like it was any other day. She had probably just come back from her lunch break.
Hey there, how can I help you?

I whispered three words.
Barely got them out.
I said, I need help.

That was it. That was my breaking of the silence.
Not some heroic moment. Just a whisper.
A whimper, really.

A few minutes later, a nurse’s aide came in. She asked what I needed. I couldn’t look at her. I just said, Can you please go in my backpack and take the Benadryl out? Because if you don’t, I’m going to take them.

She didn't go for the bag. She sat down on my bed and held my hand as I sobbed. She listened. Really listened. Little did I know she had created a space I would see a few months later in rehab- the fire pit where I saw radical vulnerability for the first time.

That’s how close I was.
That’s how close she got — the void.

And looking back, it was all a lie anyway. My mind was lying to me.
Any medical professional reading this will tell you: if I had swallowed one hundred and ninety-eight Benadryl in a hospital, they would’ve noticed. They would’ve saved me. I probably would’ve just woken up groggy, miserable, maybe damaged. There was never a clean way out.

But the void told me there was.
She told me it would be quiet and gentle.
She sold me peace and handed me poison.

That’s what she does.
She doesn’t make you hate your life — she just convinces you it doesn’t matter.

That day, pressing that red button — that was the start of everything.
I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t realize that a whisper would turn into a story, and the story would turn into a movement.
But that was the moment the silence cracked for me.

That was the day I broke it for myself.
And later, I learned I could break it for others, too.

And here’s the thing I need to say — the void didn’t go quiet. She never really does.
She’s still there. 

Even now.
Even after starting a movement, after building The Cost of Saving a Life, after finding purpose, people, and hope. 

She still whispers.

She’s in another room now. Muted. Muffled. I can’t make out the words anymore, but I still hear her sometimes.
And that’s okay because I know her voice.
I know what she sounds like.
And I know her lies.

Someone reading this may recognize her voice and realize those sweet nothings she whispers are all lies.