TW: Suicide, abuse

I started dating my ex boyfriend, we’ll call him A during my freshman year of high school. We dated consecutively for 6ish months, and then we were on and off till mid junior year. A was my first love, my first kiss, my first everything. But our relationship was not healthy. It started with little things like being very possessive of me, being very clingy. He one time punched a girl for calling me cute in the hallway. Things like that. Our relationship was very toxic. And when me and A broke up for the first time, he attempted suicide. He was hospitalized for a month, and then sent to an alternative school in another neighborhood by his parents. After that, my parents also sent me to an alternative school because of my mental health. Around that time I was diagnosed with BPD due to my instability surrounding our relationship. But that didn’t stop us, for the next two years we would be on and off dating in secret. He would pick me up late at night, I would sneak over when his parents were out of town. We were horribly and insanely toxic. I would constantly end things with him for my “mental health”, and he would turn to borderline stalking me. He would throw rocks at my window, harrass me online, message my friends, threaten anyone else i dated. And as shitty as I am for it, I would almost always take him back. And the cycle would continue.

About half way through my junior year, me and A broke up for good. He got accepted into his dream school in california (he was a grade above me) and I had made strides in my mental health and was strong enough to end things for good. It was finally a healthy split too. We both realized we didn’t want to be that way anymore, we wanted peace. He went on to date someone else a couple months later and so did I.

Here’s where it gets bad. In july, the summer before my senior year, and a month before he left for college, A commited suicide. I found out through his best friend. She had called me at 5 AM the morning after, and I initially declined assuming it was a prank call or something. That afternoon MY best friend messaged me and said “something bad happened to A”. I immediately called A’s best friend back. She told me I needed to sit down, and then told me what happened. She told me her first thought was “Who is gonna tell OP?” I was broken. I cried for weeks on end. My boyfriend at the time dumped me because I “never talked anymore”. My best friends stopped talking to me too. I became a shell of myself. I was admitted to the hospital off and on. It was the worst thing i’ve ever experienced in my life. From what I know, A commited suicide after getting into a heated argument with his girlfriend at the time. We will call her B. As it turns out, B was very toxic towards A. And drove A to suicide. Though I won’t say it’s all her fault, I think B had a part to play in what happened. A was struggling a lot, and I hadn’t known because we hadn’t talked in over a month. I held a lot of guilt for that. I thought if i had been there I could have saved him. I started receiving dozens of messages from people I barely knew, all saying they were sorry for my loss. It took me months to get back to where i was, and I still struggle with it a lot. Its almost been a year now, but it still hurts.

This is the situation i’m in: My best friend made a new friend, lets call her E. E apparently went to A’s school, and claims “oh yeah me and A used to date, his death crushed me. I knew him so well.” And though I can’t outright say she’s a liar, I don’t fully believe that for many reasons. But i’m not the type of person to start anything because of it. I’d rather just ignore her statements. There were a lot of people saying that exact thing after he passed. A lot of people used his death for attention, making claims that “oh I was A’s best friend” or other similar remarks. But today my best friend told me that she told E who I was, she told E that I had dated A, that I was really close to him and whatnot. Apparently E asked to talk to me about A, that she wants to know more about his death and what happened. I said absolutely not. I’m not going to talk about that with someone I don’t know. I’m not going to tell someone how A passed away. If they don’t already know what happened, there’s a reason for that. His family tried their hardest to keep the fact that it was a suicide a secret, and rightfully so. They didn’t want that publicity and I understand that. This wouldn’t be the first time someone came to me asking how he died, what he did, what happened etc etc. So obviously I said no, i’m not comfortable with talking to E about that. But my best friend, and some other mutuals are saying that I’m being disrespectful. Saying “it will help her get closure” “it’s been months anyways”.

I don’t know E, I don’t know what relationship E and A had. And it could be me taking things too seriously, i’m not sure. Theres a part of me that gets really guarded about A, I’m really overly cautious about talking about him. I think maybe i’m just being paranoid, and I should suck it up. But I also feel like If she was really as close to A as she claims, she would already know what happened. So, am I the asshole?