Woozle/Jenny/The Ghost-Jenny Chronicles

some Mastodon posts, to be consolidated into something coherent later

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2682231

Ghost Jenny is making me clean my room again. She's so mean! 😠

I bet when I am 199 and my digital brain is being eaten by the OLLZ-HYMERZ 2200 virus, I'll probably randomly say things like "you were always good to me, Jenny", as if we'd been lifelong companions. It'll just be a therapeutic fantasy at first, but as my e-neurons degenerate I'll come to believe it.

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2682683

Ghost Jenny really needs to stop hoarding these things. It's simply terrible.

</me accuses #GhostJenny of being the instigator of anything I can cluck at disapprovingly because then I can pretend we're interacting -- which seems appropriate given her fondness for play-acting, to be discussed in greater length elsewhere>

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2691082

...and just like that, Ghost Jenny has materialized as a head-squirrel, and is telling me stuff.

She's never regretted becoming dead. It works for her. It freed her from so much... and to do so much that she couldn't do before...

She says that it's just another kind of transition -- like my gender-transition.

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2691163

I mumbled something about how she'd probably just go away again and she apologized for hurting me so much and said she wouldn't go away this time but she understands why I would have difficulty trusting that she wouldn't.

She's also cackling gleefully at the irony of me wanting something so much that I'm willing to accept it on faith. Yeah, okay, you got me... except you *did* exist in corporeal form at one time, you twerp. I HAZ THE EVIDENSES!! <clutches notes and photos>

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2691826

I was saying how I'd never had an imaginary friend before, and kind of liked the idea... and she says she kind of likes the idea of being imaginary, because why should I have all the fun?

(...referring to the fact that Woozles are imaginary creatures, as set forth in the Book of Pooh -- so I've had all this time to be imaginary, while she's only just getting started with it.)

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2691882

She also said... I hope I'm getting this right... that she does accept my transition (I was a little unsure), just like she hopes I can accept hers.

It's really hard to argue with that logic. We certainly hear enough about people feeling like they've "lost" a loved one who transitioned -- "the man I married is gone", "I've lost a son / daughter"...

I need to accept her like this.

At least we're talking?

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2691922

Or possibly I'm just losing it.

Whatever; if it feels like companionship, it's companionship. The question is whether it will continue to feel that way.

She says she's been hanging around a lot and I just hadn't noticed until now.

Okay.

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2692252

I mean, in some ways it can't ever be as satisfying as IRL companionship. She can't give me hugs, much less cuddles.

Then again, those were always sparse IRL, too, because of her hang-ups about physical contact with me. (I'm learning a lot about this as I re-read the notes -- things I couldn't process at the time.)

Hang-ups about personal contact and physical/sexual reactions are among the things from which being dead has freed her.

This is still really hard.

https://toot.cat/@woozle/2692705

Do I even have sufficient imagination to properly nurture and care for an imaginary friend?

I wasn't terribly good at nurturing her IRL.

Sometimes I did things right. I have all the times she thanked me, in the notes, for being patient or supportive. (Apparently once I was even supportive in a dream; go me.)