Project #1: Japanese Stab Bine Zine, aka "quitter."

My piece is a Japanese stab bind zine, called "quitter.", which is based on the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The name is based on a name I received not too soon after I lost my close friend J.P, who killed himself after not being accepting for being transgender. I wasn't allowed at his funeral because they didn't want any of his "faggot friends" ruining the ceremony. So he was buried in a dress, with flowers in his hair, under a gravestone with the wrong name. I'm not going to divulge his full name: you don't need to know that much information. But I was soon to discover that society expects you to get over loss as soon as it becomes inconvenient for them. Weeks have gone by now, but I still haunted, scared by the idea that I might have killed my friend by not being there in different ways. I soon heard different things from the condolences I had previously heard:

"You're a quitter."
"You need to stop sulking."
"Your friend wouldn't want you to whine like this."
"He was a lost cause, you know."
"You didn't know him as well as you thought..."
"If you think you're sad, how do you think HER parents feel?"
"Quitter quitter quitter quitter quit quit quit..."

It stung. I wanted to cry and scream and at the same time do nothing and feel numb. It had shaken me to my core, how grief became inconvenient to my closest family, and now they just expect me to get over such an event? How?

So I made "quitter.". And it's fair to say I'm not over my loss. It's replaying in my mind every single day sometimes. But this was cathartic, and I hope you enjoy it in some way.

~S.K