After my mum died, her friend stayed in contact with me and has been ringing up weekly ever since.
This friend has many mental health issues such as hoarding and shopping addiction.
When my child was born she used to send enormous parcels of presents often duplicates of the same thing and despite my DH and I insisting that she didn’t need to do this, we eventually gave up and just donated many of the items to charity shops.
About 10 years ago she asked me to write a letter to her psychiatrist to back her up that she didn’t need to be on antidepressants/ anti anxiety meds.
I wrote a letter saying that she was working full time and managing her life. She was then taken off the medication.
Since then she has become increasingly anxious, paranoid and antisocial. She lost her job because she kept on getting into huge arguments with colleagues, she fell out with her entire family over some kind of dispute over some inheritance they were trustees for and she kept telling me that I was her family which made me feel really uncomfortable but I felt sorry for her being so alone and vulnerable and because she lived so far away from me with no way of getting to where I live, I took it upon myself to be a listening ear.
Over the past few months she has become really paranoid that people are looking into her bungalow at night to the point where she’s bought blinds, cameras and special window black outs. She has some learning difficulties so often rings asking me to help her with phone/ internet issues and she seems to have slowly fallen out with everyone she knows.
I’m very busy in my own life and don't often fancy answering her calls which have been one increasingly angry, paranoid and ranty. If I make suggestions like calling the police she just gets angry and says they’re rubbish and haven’t done anything.
Earlier this week she sent an array of very badly punctuated strange messages to me referring to them listening to her through the walls, killing her and asking me to come and get her.
I rang the police station near where she lives and they told me to contact the 111 mental health team local to her. I did and they didn’t decide to do a well fare check in the end.
I told her that she sounded unwell and asked her if she thought she was paranoid and she said no that she had photo evidence and asked me what train she needed to get on to get to my town.
She said she would get on the train to Manchester (which is nowhere near where I live) and I replied telling her to contact the police because the problem would still be waiting for her when she arrived home.
She told me she wasn’t paranoid and that she had arrived in my home town. At this point I called her and lied saying I was on holiday in Cornwall and that she can’t just come to my town expecting me to drop everything. She got really angry and said she was staying in a hotel near my house because she needed to get away. I told her she needed to show these so called videos to the police and that she did not sound well and should seek help from 111.
She said, “have a great holiday” and hung up on me. At this point I blocked her numbers (she has about 5 mobile phones) and I am washing my hands of her.
She’s quite physically impaired very overweight with mobility issues so I’m not worried for my safety but I certainly don’t want any of this near my children or my home.
I feel awful that my letter to her psychiatrist all those years ago could have led to this but I have to just stop it now.