I tried to help someone with a personality disorder. Here’s why I stopped

What do you do when someone’s disorder makes them behave in an evil way?

It was a dark, cold late January day when a message flickered up on my screen as I huddled under the covers. A former work colleague, from some years ago, had reached out. I hadn’t spoken to him in maybe a year, maybe more, as he’d been in an intense relationship with someone our mutual friendship group- myself included- had felt very uncomfortable about. Perhaps it was the huge circles of face-paint rouge painted on her cheeks like Baby Jane, or her elaborate attempts to communicate with everyone he had ever met on social media, but something felt off. In the middle of a pandemic, it was easier to look away, do something else, and mute the stream of tags and messages from this peculiar stranger. But now a year or so on, he’d reached out: they’d broken up, and he wanted to talk.

Having just left my own relationship, I immediately sympathised with him. I know what the dead days of wandering the streets alone without a hand to hold or a voice to rattle through conversations with feels like. I texted back, said how sorry I was to hear that, and offered to get him a coffee. I got precious little details about what had happened- they had argued in Venice, he’d finally had enough, it was over. Exhausted, and still sad at my own loneliness, I fell back asleep. When I woke a few hours later, I was stunned.