Dealing with PPD ex; exhausted, terrified and stuck in a loop (VERY LONG POST)

[jojo_88]

Hello all,

 

First of all, I apologize in advance for this insanely long post, this is the mother of all TL;DR but it isn't a rant, it's a genuinely complex situation. I'm at a point of desperation and I sincerely hope I'm posting in the appropriate thread, I almost considered putting this in the abuse section; if not, please redirect me to the right section!

I welcome any advice on the situation I'm in which is to say the very least, peculiar. I've been more than foolish in this situation, so forgive me for the staggering length of this post.

 

I'm bisexual but haven't come out to my family, nor most of my friends for religious and personal reasons. I met a girl in my last year of high school, she had transferred and was quite lonely. She was two years younger than me and I met her in a committee I handled. She was often made fun of because she has a strange behavior. I felt sorry for her and helped her feel more comfortable at school; she was bicurious and used to look up to me somewhat in that subject, and almost everything else. I would help her out with her personal problems and always listen to her troubles.

 

I'm the first to admit that at first, I was quite flattered by the amount of respect, nearly blind devotion she expressed at my person. Finally we went out for a couple of weeks, but she turned out to be so incredibly needy and toxic to me and my entourage; she would stalk me, would run after my car if I left earlier, pop up at my house at 7 am once, she would try to befriend everyone in my entourage and stalk their Facebook... it was a nightmare.

 

In terms of personality, I'm a very independent person and need a lot of time on my own. I'm also a rational rather than an effusive person so I express my feelings very differently, but she's the opposite, she's extremely emotional and prone to very dramatic outbursts of anger and drama (she's actually obsessed with the opera and drama characters; she actually likes to consider herself a tragic heroine from an operette, i kid you not). I couldn't take it anymore and broke up with her. I cut contact with her and then moved to Canada for university. After a few months, she finally sent an apologetic email saying she had sort of lost it because of other personal problems, and that she was only looking for someone to talk to. I decided to resume a platonic friendship with her.

 

In the meantime, she had fallen in love with our English teacher. I won't go through all the details but in a nutshell, she was harboring an obsessive love for her; she would not sleep, eat, and wouldn't talk about anything but her. She would write letters she wouldn't send, she even wrote a whole novel starring her and said teacher in this overly sexualized erotica, She stalked her records, found personal information on her that made me cringe, befriended her daughter to get closer to her, it was crazy. The worst part was that she imagined it was reciprocated but that the teacher was just too loyal to her husband to do anything. when she left for college, she flunked the entire year and started talking about killing herself because of the teacher, although she never even told her anything.

 

Again, she started sucking the life out of me, so i distanced myself once more.

 

Another year passed. She contacted me again and said she was over the teacher and was back to a normal life. We started dating again and decided to take things slow since we were in different locations. Obviously, she started acting mental again. She would force us to talk for almost three hours via chat every single day and if I had work or plans, even with my siblings, she would get incredibly jealous. She would stalk my friends asking if I was really with them, she'd call almost 20 times in a row, or send these incredibly vicious emails. But then she'd immediately apologize, beg for forgiveness, and blame it on her trust issues that I caused for 'leading her on' in the past. She asked me to marry in her in the first two months (I declined) and would create this fantasy world where we would be happy forever after. If I dared contest it, she would get angry again.

 

I had to move back to my home country at some point to renew some immigration papers, but then she said she was moving to my town in Canada because of some things she had to deal with her family, and because I was there. I had told her before I wouldn't be there for a while, but she said it was no bother since her family was there too. My papers ended up taking six months rather than a month because of some technical issue, during which we maintained contact but it was fight after fight, verbal abuse, blackmail (she said she always tried to kill herself and it was always my fault), and refusing to let me go when I tried to break things off. She refused to read my emails to help her understand my viewpoint (I express myself better in writing) then accused me of being a horrible person. She stayed in Canada six months 'waiting' although I told her not to, then proceeded to blame all of it on me, rather than on the administrative issues I was having.

 

I finally told her to leave me alone because she was starting to terrify me, and it was bordering on threats. So I broke it off with her AGAIN, and it took me a week for her to get it. She then begged me not to disappear or else she would kill herself.

 

She has alienated herself from all her family, most of her friends with this behavior but still thinks she's a martyr. I recently discovered she may suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder; so I realize that she is unwell and that I've enabled her for years, so my part of responsibility is real. But I can't take it anymore, I spiraled into a heavy depression for more than two years because of her.

 

The problem is that I hate confrontation and tend to avoid it, which makes it easy for her to force things; and she would always guilt trip me into staying by reminding me that I caused her this grief by leading her on then dumping her. I know it's false, but I can't help but still fall for it. And I do own up to my responsibilities and told her I recognize where I was wrong, but it's never enough.

 

So the easy solution is to just disappear, but judging how she messed up my life last time I did that, I don't know how to do that again. I am stuck because I fear that cutting her off will result in her blabbing to my family (who doesn't know of my sexual orientation) and friends, ruining my reputation and since she works now in my old school and has access to both my personal files and those of my baby sister now attending, I fear she will blackmail me further. I cannot contact the police because since our family is rather famous, I can't afford to bring up a scandal. And now she is using a business opportunity as an occasion to talk to me (she asked me to design her a cover, and my boss says we can't technically refuse a client on personal grounds).

 

How in heaven's name can I cut off this toxic person from my life without the potential scandal that can stem from it, but especially without losing my mind? I haven't touched the tip of the iceberg but this is already a lot to write down. Please help me in any way you can, and if you managed to read up to this point then congratulations and thank you so very much. If any more details are needed I shall provide them.

[turnera]

My advice is to go to therapy to learn to be ok with standing up for yourself. You can't affect her. You can, though, learn to be tougher.

[turnera]

Oh, and tell your family/friends the truth about anything you don't want held over your head.