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By Amaranthia Sepia
August 11, 2021
2 min read
My comic project, "Emo Bunny: Anxiety Monster," is a comic series focused on raising awareness about the severity of anxiety disorders. Sarah, nicknamed "Emo Bunny," is a bunny girl who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). She illustrates my own experiences with GAD. Her anxiety appears as a monster who becomes stronger as she becomes more stressed. Many anxiety disorder sufferers feel their anxiety is a monster's voice in their head, harassing them. In Emo Bunny's case, the beast changes its form depending on the type of anxiety she's experiencing (social anxiety, panic attack, anxiety attack). My goal is to highlight the struggle of having an anxiety disorder and the benefits of emotional support animals. In 2019 "Emo Bunny: Anxiety Monster" was an online educational solo art show on Squidink Art Gallery featured by Concord Monitor, The ADAA, MissHeardMedia, Concord Insider, and VLACS Newsletter. My solo show "Emo Bunny: Anxiety Monster" at Out of the Blue Gallery and more in Boston, MA, got delayed due to Covid-19. "Emo Bunny" is a comic series that is a work in progress.
My goal is to have an activist-focused gallery feature these artworks and collaborate with an inclusive mental health organization to produce this comic.
"Anomie" is the first full-length comic I made for this series. "Anomie" is a semi-autobiographical comic based on my experiences with PTSD caused by trauma from ongoing, severe racism and bullying. It's a bit of Sarah's origin story on how bullying, oppression, and ostracization led to her struggling with her identity, mental health/PTSD, and outer appearance. No community, including her community of rabbits, accepts her because of her thick, kinky hair, taller-than-average height, and albinism. As someone who experiences PTSD nightmares, this comic communicates the feeling of those horrible trauma-induced dreams. When reaching out to the few Black people I met in my community and most of my family, I was rejected due to being open about mental and chronic illness and being Buddhist. When standing up to racism in my community via my anti-bullying project, "Do You Know Who I Am?" that addressed racism and my own experiences, I was ostracized by teachers and the principal. As a result, I became homeschooled online. This led to me feeling a lack of support in society and an identity crisis.
Read the full comic on my website, AmaranthiaSepiaArtworks.art, or my Instagram, @emobunnycomic
Learn more about my work here: https://linktr.ee/_cutiehipsterart_/
*Originally published in-print in Boston Compass Newspaper #138 August 2021