RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/115606802255500200

(Aha! Apparently @xkcd, unlike @xkcd, does not block quoosts. Switching my follows...)

I feel like talking about #Tigger and #JennyHypertwin but I also am not sure what to say; rambling now ensues, therefore....

[CW: very old death & sui refs follow 💀 🧪]

Tigger got cancer but didn't make it; Jenny either left on her own initiative or was killed by a deadly bullshit infection (evidence strongly suggestive but inconclusive).

"Do I sound like a 17-year-old? (I've only had two days to practice.)" -- J, who never got to be 18

🎵
You might feel so bad that you wanna die
But if you died you would never know
That it didn't kill you
Soon you would've felt better.
[...]
You're not ever going to feel any better
Once you're dead, you don't get any deader.
[...]
Now you're never gonna get any older
And I really do miss you, but how would you know?
🎵 -- Fastball, "Love Doesn't Kill You"

...and I would have done anything to have more time with either of them.

I sometimes think that maybe by honoring J's stated boundaries so thoroughly and literally, I gave her the impression that I didn't care anymore -- and that maybe she wasn't worth caring about, and maybe that's why she decided to do what she did. ...but there's no way to know, now. Maybe I just want to either blame myself and/or feel like I was still important to her.

We've had 22 (T) and 42 (J) years of not being together ever, not talking or smiling or looking at the sky or taking walks or just sitting in the same space, and it really sucks and the emptiness never goes away.

...and it occurred to me today to wonder if maybe I'm having a hard time taking the idea of new relationships seriously because they'd first need to achieve something on the order of the longevity of those existing relationships. I really first got to know both J and T around 1980-81; my relationship with both of them is (therefore) 4 decades old. A mere 15 years still seems like "recently", and I've only been nominally the right gender for 8 of those.

(...and at this point I run into things that I no longer feel free to talk about because it could too easily hurt someone I care about if I say it wrong, so I should probably just stop.)

#JennyHypertwin would have been 60 today.  

Pictured: Jenny and @Harena posing as fashion models, 1978.

I'm suddenly realizing how much Wednesday Addams there was in #JennyHypertwin:

• unusual footwear
• general deficit in facial affect
• long straight dark hair, often in braids
• somewhat rigid body-language
• dark clothing (usually jeans & lumberjack shirt)
• ever-so-slightly off-"white" skin-tone (Bavarian/Bohemian, not Hispanic -- but whatever)

...except for one thing: Jenny was attracted to cheerful-but-authentic people. She probably would have loved Enid.

I wish I could have been her Enid... but I was never much good at being cheerful, especially back then.

@Harena & me at the funeral

The guy just visible to H's right (and several rows back) is her oldest nephew, whom'st I remember #JennyHypertwin being arm-twisted into watching over when he was 2 or so. I was visiting her house one time when she was doing that. Another time, she apparently painted this while he was in her lap.

In order of my becoming aware of them:

...and how is your morning going Mrs. Lincoln? 

#JennyHypertwin appeared -- there was no context for it; we were just face to face in a semi-public building (a business?) and other people were talking. At first I wasn't sure it was her, but on second look it clearly was and I wondered why I was thinking it might not have been. ("Why am I being so paranoid?")

She was making expressive faces at me, so I made a face back in an attempt to react and get into her headspace -- but her reaction made me think I'd done it wrong, so I asked "okay, what does that expression mean?".

She kind huffed in a disappointed way and complained about my tendency to always want to pin things down with explanations, and I said "no no, I'm trying to communicate with you nonverbally but I feel like I'm reading you wrong" or words to that effect.

Her body-language in reaction to that kind of relaxed in a surprised way, like "Oh! That's different, I approve" and she started to try to explain but then I woke up with a headache, with the word "why" running through my head.

Happy Jenny's Birtthday! Today she would have been 59.

Years ago (on G+ so i can't resurrect what I said exactly) I started a "tradition" that goes something like this:

Jenny loved trees, so for her birthday, I like to find a tree to hug. Everybody, find a tree, hug it, 'cause Jenny is awesome & the world is a much poorer place without her.

(Yes, i was low on spoons so i just copied a past post but the sentiment remains as strong)

#JennyHypertwin #HugATree

Today is the 40th anniversary of a discovery which caused the following day to become the worst day of my life.

I guess I'll write about it tomorrow.

#JennyHypertwin