I have a friend that I met about 10 years ago. We bonded really fast over strong similarities in our upbringing, mindset, interests etc. and she was really dear to me. I had a tough childhood at times and it was really special to meet someone like her who 'got it' in a really specific way. She was lovely, kind, generous, made me laugh etc...
After a couple years of friendship I realised that maybe these similarities may have been a bit of a case of 'emulation' or whatnot wherein this friend would kind of 'copy' me (sounds stupid at childish sorry) and it became uncomfortable. Pretty standard stuff you see in this kind of 'copycat' style friendship, same clothes, same stuff, purported same interests. But also some controlling behaviour, putting me down, trying to get in between me and my DH (by telling me our strong, loving relationship was toxic etc). To the point where I kind of found out that she had been pretending to be 'into' and have gone through similar things to me, things that I think were foundational in our friendship, may not have been wholly true.
When I started to distancing myself or just taking a break from it all (as it got weird, stressful and confusing I guess) she became quite scary and would turn up unexpectedly in my neighbourhood (she lived about 40 minutes away), at my work etc. I knew this because she would take photos of herself near my house (walking her dog in my local park for example, so not right outside my door) and post them on social media. All the other kind of overt copying stuff was on social media (posting sort of similar posts in similar outfits/doing similar things with same caption..) She also made up illnesses she didn't have etc. I have a gorgeous old collie dog and she bought one exactly the same colour and called it something very similar to my old girl's name... She also seemed to know things about me and I wasn't sure how she knew them. She knew I was pregnant before I announced it, I wondered if she had been looking at who I was following on IG and guessed it? She then got pregnant herself.
I want to caveat this with I don't actually blame my friend and think she was really going through a tough time at that time. Her relationship was going through a rough spot and she had a really difficult, toxic workplace issue with an awful male coworker. She was also battling food addiction and is/was very overweight (no shade on overweight people, just I think it did really bother her, tbh I'm also slightly overweight) which I think made life difficult for her in lots of ways. I also miss our friendship to an extent except for the creepy parts... and I like seeing her be well, her DC is very sweet (she goes to the same school as my DC, and they get on well)...
Anyways my other friends, DH etc told me to completely ghost her, delete from social media etc but I still follow her on social media almost to keep an eye on her out of fear or something... I can't quite let her be gone from my social media for some reason... AIBU?