Cassandra Khaw’s Find Me Where It Ends is a concise, quietly devastating story about death, depression, exhaustion, and the complicated question of what it means to choose to keep living. Antigone has grown up knowing that death comes for the women in her family in the form of a black dog. So when her own black dog appears at her door, she doesn’t panic. Instead, she welcomes Death into her home and allows him to become part of her daily life. His presence gives her a strange kind of comfort as she reflects on the life she has lived and the parts of herself she has sacrificed along the way.
The black dog is an effective metaphor for the kind of deep depression that can make death feel less frightening than continuing to live. Antigone doesn’t initially seem eager to die so much as exhausted by the effort of existing. She accepts the possibility of death because, at least for a while, it offers the promise of rest. But when circumstances change, waiting for death to arrive on its own is no longer enough, and Antigone begins considering whether she should make that choice herself.
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