well, I could of course open a fresh thread. It's the same situation ongoing, though.
The blood relative who tends toward suicidal hints, is active again. I avoid contact entirely with this person, when there is any business -- literally -- to be concluded between their legal situation and my legal situation, there is a combination of lawyers and financial officers who negotiate things. So it has been for more years than I can actually recall.
The caller ID on my telephone shows that this blood relative has got hold of my home phone number and is making repeated phone calls, with their name and phone number larger than life on the ID screen.
It was not I who gave the relative my phone number. It's a moot thing anyhow. What the relative does not take into account, is that after decades -- not merely years, but decades -- of harassment concerning my telephone, and after going through a knothole of responses of trying to evade it or prosecute it or whatever, I have learned ways of coping that I didn't have before.
Were I to change my phone number, that would signal to the relative making the calls that I acknowledge their crossing the line (my blood relatives know that I wish to be left alone). I don't see evidence of escalating behavior, nor of anyone having the aggression to really actually approach me. So from where I'm sitting, changing my phone number, or doing anything territorial to it, is actually counter-productive. Strange as this sounds, the sanest thing to do is to carry on and not give this person the satisfaction.
While this drama-loving relative is NOT the relative who has issues of substance abuse and of domestic violence/aggression, the fact remains that this relative is -- to use a metaphor for the family dysfunction -- the spider at the center of the spider-web. Loves to be a victim who makes victims of others. I truly know better than to fall for any of it this time.
That makes it a little simpler, but not easier, if this makes any sense. Thanks for listening.