People I seriously need advice. in The Big, Blue, House. Year two.

The Favorite Niece messaged my art page on Facebook. Not my personal page, my art page. And she messaged me from another person’s account, some guy whose name I don’t recognize. So I got this message from Robert-somebody, with a picture of Favorite Niece looking thin, sallow, and not wearing a bra, with what look like hastily spray-foamed trailer walls behind her, saying “Aunt _____, I’m getting better. I love you.”

I replied “I’m so glad. I love you. I just want you to be safe.” If she were actually “getting better” she wouldn’t be messaging my art page from the account of a third party, looking like an emaciated rehab patient.

She messaged back, but I have yet to read it, so all I’ve seen is the notification, because I don’t want her to see that I’ve ‘read’ it and am ignoring her. I do love her, after all. The bit that’s visible in the notification says, “Does your offer still stand? And can I bring somebody with me? I need someplace safe.”

Now to recap for those unfamiliar with the situation, Favorite Niece is delusional bipolar. Badly alcoholic. And as of earlier this year, on both meth, and heroin. In our last conversation back in April, she thought that her ex-boyfriend was possessed by a demon, swore she saw his eyes turn red, and that my late mother’s spirit was in her brain telling her who she shouldn’t trust. She thought that her Facebook was being repeatedly hacked, so she stopped using it. She wouldn’t use her phone because she thought she was being tracked. She thought that her exe’s whole family and all of his friends were like a demonic mafia, trying to hunt her down and kill her.

So she left her job, and went to stay with her father in a different town. But she wasn’t there more than a year. She said, like she’d said several times before, that she was finally happy and getting her life together.

Then she left her youngest son with another of my nieces and disappeared. Two months later, she messaged a cousin, telling her she’d moved in with her mother, in New York. That wasn’t more than two months ago.

Now she wants to move in with me.

She’s moved in with least four serious boyfriends over the last eight years, and just as many jobs, as she moves around from house to house. She can’t stay settled anywhere, and since I haven’t seen her in person for about twelve years, I can’t say for certain why that is, but I can imagine and extrapolate from the information that I have. She would post to Facebook that she’d finally found “the one”, then six months to a year later, she’d be in a different town, living with someone new. Don always says, “How many ‘the ones’ is she up to now?”

I love this walking dumpster fire, because we were children together, and she was always kind to me, when very few people were. But the idea of her coming here makes my heart race in a bad way. I know from her track record that she’ll just be leaving again, thinking that I’ve joined the mafia trying to kill her.

She needs far more help than I can give her.

On the other hand, somewhere under the mental illness and addictions, there is the kindest, most genuinely altruistic member of my family.

How the f$%& do I tell her "no" and maintain a relationship with her? Or how do I have such a person living in our home without her thinking that I've joined the shadowy super hacker demonic mafia hunting her? And how do I keep my own sanity while living with such a person??

Besides which, we live on SNAP benefits, and a fixed income. I’m not even sure she trusts government programs to use them herself, and frankly, we can’t afford to feed additional people.

And then what if I do say ‘no’, and she winds up in a tent somewhere, OD’ed? I’d never forgive myself for not trying to help her.

But so many people have tried to give her a stable home, including her own parents. Why would I fare any better?!

Jeezus freaking cripes people.

I’m sitting here visibly shaking from the sheer stress. I'm in a no win situation.

I’m not going back to Facebook until I know what I’m doing.

I want to help the girl I knew. But the delusional drug addict she’s become makes that a legitimately frightening endeavor.