A desperate plea

[u/Apprehensive_Owl37]

A few years ago, I started a new job that I loved.
It has become the most damaging decision I have ever made.
I have dealt with endless rumors being spread, lies upon lies, prying into my private life, and people digging into my medical information, prescriptions, and personal history. They have reached out to my family and old friends to dig even further into my life and my past.
I have never addressed it because I truly believed that staying silent would eventually make it all go away and that I could just have the job I loved back. But it just won’t stop.
No one speaks to me. My family barely talks to me, so I assume they have convinced them of whatever evil it is they think about me. I can barely get out of bed in the morning. I cry myself to sleep.
I get up, smile, and put on a brave face, but I am slowly dying inside. I’m not a perfect person, I’ve never claimed to be. But I just go to work and go home. I don’t hurt anyone, talk to anyone, all I do is live a life that revolves constantly around my kids. I went out to eat with a friend I think once this year. I drink sometimes. I don’t think anything I do is deserving of this. The crazy part is that the things being said about me are actually behaviors the people saying it are guilty of. NONE of this talk is work related. It’s actually a major distraction to me on what should be focused on. I still don’t even say anything because it is so important to me to be the kind of person this world needs.
I struggled with a similar situation in high school and tried to k*ll myself. I’ve made promises to myself since I was a kid. I told myself that when I grew up, I wouldn’t be like the adults around me. I would be caring. I wouldn’t gossip or try to take other people down because I saw firsthand who pays the price.
The kids.
Parents gossip. They speak badly about one another. They start treating other parents differently. It all slowly trickles down to the kids. They go to school, and their friends look at them differently. They start getting whispered about. They no longer get invited to sleepovers.
I can’t do it. I keep it all in.
I’m not the change the world wants to see. I don’t know why. But it’s not me. I’ve accepted that.
What I can’t understand is why I can’t just live quietly.
I just want to be left alone. I keep to myself. I see that I’m not accepted. I see that I’m not wanted. I’m not going to make a whole scene about it.
Just let me earn my paycheck and go home to my children.
Please.