endlings

by nat raum

i’m told i’m the first and last of my kind, and thank god, really, because i wouldn’t wish myself on my worst enemy—impulsive and spiteful and catatonic is a hell of a combination, and that’s before i strike a match and let it fall to desiccated earth, consumption and destruction the only strong things i know. there is softness hidden somewhere in the spaces between ribs but it never finds the fortitude to swallow my body and brain alike; i am instead forever hurtling at warpspeed towards imagined emergencies.

i believe in evolution but i cannot understand why, after millennia of supposed improvements, this particular bug of mine has not left the system altogether. other than the ferocity with which i love, i cannot find any of its benefits, any sort of symbiosis i can use as an excuse to actually love myself as i do others. i still don’t know what the word borderline in this disorder even refers to—is it the thin, transparent line within myself that i never know i have crossed until i am firmly in dangerous territory already?

indeed, i have never had an original experience. i am neither the first nor the last who will bemoan the throes of an episode. many before me have given control to their emotions in ways they have later regretted, and so continues the cycle. i want so desperately to imagine a universe in which i do not feel the world spinning, collapsing inward as i am left to run away, but this is the only way i know. there is no cure, no treatment other than keep yourself alive at all costs. i approach a renegade dialectical behavioral therapy in which i occasionally have to be selfish for my own wellbeing. this is all we can do sometimes—survive.

A creature of the void brought into the earthly realm by the foul forces of compulsory heterosexuality, nat raum is the author of 22 published or forthcoming books and counting.