That's a loaded question. Well to me, through what I have heard from others and theories, I imagine there was other universes before us. It wasn't just nothingness, there was another universe, perhaps in another dimension that either ended or is still around today. Alternate dimensions are a theory, so it was probably just a matter of when ours would be born. We could've been the result of reaching the singularity in a black hole or we could've been the continuation of a grand generation of universes. Either way, I think before us there was other things that filled the void of darkness that we imagine to be before us.