Guilt and Fear Over Ex-Friend

Hi everyone. This has been going on for half a year now and I just need some extra ears.

I was friends with someone for about 2 1/2 years. I met them when I was 16 and we stopped talking right when I turned 19. They’re a few years younger than me (I think 3? They gave me different ages. Right now they’re claiming to be 17 but I thought they were younger) and we met online in a support forum kind of like this one, but for teenagers.

We were really good friends, I thought. We wrote original stories together and drew art together and played the same online game so we talked about that a lot. We also talked about family stressors and life stressors like school.

I tried my hardest to be supportive of them and build them up. I felt really responsible for their well-being because they had a bad home life and a lot of mental health problems and sometimes they’d come to me with these really serious things (self-harm, abuse, sexual assault, etc) and I’d do my best to help. Looking back this was not my responsibility and really hurt the both of us, and I feel awful about it. I felt really guilty that I couldn’t help, and I was really uncomfortable about this stuff but I was worried if I stopped talking to them that they would hurt themself, so I kept the line open.

I also have mental health struggles and I would sometimes talk about them — nothing in-depth, but sometimes complaints about things happening with my healthy or ranting about home. Again I feel really bad about this and I shouldn’t have talked about these things with them. We may have met in a support forum but I should have looked to other places for support. A lot of my mental breaks were also facilitated by the stress of this friendship, which I can recognize in hindsight, and I wasn’t always kind. Again I feel really bad. They never deserved my problems and neither do any of my other friends. I’m trying to find other ways to process my emotions.

In October, she suddenly blocked me. I had sensed things were off before this and was checking in to see if she was alright, if she wanted to talk or wanted space, etc, and she said she wanted to keep talking. When I saw all her social media account missing I panicked and thought she had really hurt herself. I reached out to one of her IRL friends asking them to check in on her before I realized I could still see some of her accounts. I deleted the message I sent to her friend and reached out to her instead.

I said I noticed I was blocked and that was okay, I wasn’t mad. I reminded her to block me everywhere if she didn’t want me to see her things. I said I hoped she was doing okay and I would appreciate it if we could talk about what led to this, but we didn’t have to. I finished by apologizing for reaching out.

She replied calling me abusive and that it wasn’t her responsibility to block me everywhere. She then blocked me. I was shocked but I respected that. I reached out to her IRL friend again and apologized for messaging them, explained that I was worried our mutual friend had been in danger but she was okay, and then I said I would block them so I wouldn’t contact them again. I then blocked that person.

Immediately afterwards I was very paranoid. I made some social media posts apologizing for things I thought I did wrong, I reached out to others and apologized to them and asked them for any boundaries they had that I was crossing and stuff. Everyone told me to calm down and that I was alright but I was still worried, mainly because this ex-friend found every social media I have and posting about the things I was posting. She refused to block me everywhere still, so I could see her things. She has called me abusive, said that she would kill me if she could, said that she hopes I never recover, that I’m a terrible person and I deserve to suffer, that I gaslit her and cause her PTSD flashbacks. She complained that I would refuse to talk about sex with her, which I find super odd and uncomfortable. She’s even claiming I drove her sister to suicide — she doesn’t have a sister! I ended up deleting all of my public social medias except one (which is an art project), and I’ve tried to avoid her but blocking her everywhere, but she won’t stop saying terrible things about me and trying to contact me.

She’s also saying I tried to push her out of spaces she wanted to be in, but these were all spaces I had joined while we were friends that she wasn’t apart of, I didn’t know she wanted to be in these spaces, and I only asked her to be blocked when she started trying to contact me through these projects. I’ve since left these projects because she’s still stalking me through them.

I feel really scared and guilty. I don’t know what I did wrong. I know I messed up and I stressed her out and I wasn’t a perfect friend, but I was never doing these things on purpose to hurt her. I was trying to avoid hurting her! I was doing everything I could to support her, and I didn’t do it well, but I don’t think that I deserve to have her saying terrible things about me and even threatening me.

I’m very sorry I caused her so much pain. I wish I could fix it and that I could hear her perspective, so I could at least know what to work on for myself for the future. I know I shouldn’t be scared because she’s just a kid and she lives on the other side of the country but I feel paranoid all the time. I just want her to stop making social media posts about me. I try not to check but I start to worry that she might be saying even worse things about me so I always check. I need to stop being that, but it’s hard. I want to be left alone. I’m trying to be kind to myself and remind myself that I was a kid most of our friendship and that I’m still very young now, but it’s hard when someone’s calling you a murderer and stuff.

Does anyone have advice? Words of wisdom? Do you all know what I should do to improve? How do I stop checking her social media?