forgive me if I say that but I did not expect to hear again from you itsnotlogical, and you know with those new bombshells it's hard to talk of relief. Happy to see you but also concerned and alarmed. As so often with you, I'm pretty much at a loss for words, and not for a lack of trying.
What your ex did was not okay, probably best to waste no thoughts on her motives either, but how enraging. What about the people that know you, but are fed this misinformation, and thusly don't try to reach out thereafter? How vile.
You really reminded me about 3-4 people that live a little further away, I promised to go see at some point these past years and still haven't, I'm such a... mmh
The very best luck to you, we're here if you want to.
See, even this is weirding me out a bit (although I do very much appreciate any thoughts, prayers, well-wishes etc. you want to send my way.) Aside from one or two people who've reached out in PMs in the past, and of course my IRL friends and family I keep in touch with online, I felt a bit like the Internet in general was like... not shouting into a void, but maybe sharing your woes with a large group of strangers you
might see again tomorrow, but also might not see again for the rest of your life. For example, I had no idea that you had been keeping up with my story so closely until now.
I'm pretty close with all the people that really matter in my life, so I'm not too concerned about misinformation. Related, and even more bizarre: at the same time she was texting my best friend in the whole world that I'd passed away, she was giving generic "he's doing okay" sort of answers to her aunt whenever she would ask about me, when I hadn't seen or talked to my ex or her aunt for months by that point. It was to the point that auntie was convinced I had moved out of town and was genuinely surprised when we rolled up to check on her (and correct the misinformation, once we found out about it.)
The only explanation I can come up with is that my ex is very, very seriously mentally ill, and I had the biggest, most opaque blinders in the world over my face. At the very least, she's a compulsive liar.