BlackHeart Biohazards

I’m in a small fandom and I haven’t posted in a long time. I want to come back, but I don’t want my activity, no matter how small, to be seen as an automatic invitation to hit me up just because I’m online, especially when I don’t feel up to chatting. It’s because of this I’m not active. I have a friend who is really persistent in getting my attention, and talking with him is now a chore since he won’t let me alone. If we don’t exchange a message for a few days, he WILL DM me to ask if I’m alive. Literally. It’s always “Are you alive? You alive over there? You alive?” It’s relentless. The last straw was when he DM’d me in all caps to ask (what else) if I was alive and beg me “PLEASE TALK TO MEEE!!!” with crying emojis and I lost sleep because I was so angry. I told him to stop, and I’m taking a fucking break from the chat app. He reasoned we only have the chat app so when he doesn’t hear from me he gets worried, but dude. It’s a few days. Not even a week. Days. Let me fucking breathe! I don’t talk to my friends for weeks and months and even years, and we’re still friends because they don’t smother me or obligate me to talk to them. We talk when we talk. Or we don’t. After I told him I was taking a break from the chat app (I wasn’t, but I was hoping that would deter him if he knows I won’t be looking at it) he just started sending me things every few days. Still does. Art he’s done or random fandom things (for fandoms I’m not even in). I’m gone a (1) month, I got 20+ messages waiting for me to look at thanks to him. When I do the “saw this, thought of you! Here!” thing, it’s maybe 5 messages at most, not 20+. The longest I’ve gone without a DM from him is maybe six days. The very last time I posted on tumblr (a few weeks ago iirc), I got a DM from him 20 minutes later saying “saw you posting! You feeling better?” on the chat app. Like holy shit my guy! Please let me breathe! I blocked him on tumblr. I don’t have the balls to block him on the chat app. I’m too tired to make a new account there (plus all my stuff is there), or go through and delete the thousands upon thousands of DMs from my side of our conversations since we’ve spoken almost every single day for the past year (until recently ofc), and I’m scared he’ll find out and confront me about it. I really want to be involved in fandom again, and tbh he’s the only one from our old group I still talk to, but I’m really starting to regret keeping this relationship at all. He still talks to the old group even though one of them accused him of being a pedo (not the first time btw) so it’s not like I’m his only source for company. We don’t even talk about anything “adult” between us. I’m just… so tired of feeling obligated to talk when I not only don’t have anything to say, but just don’t want to. Any advice?