How do I (40M) communicate tactfully but firmly to my child's mother (39F) that I don't want to engage with her?

The title makes me sound horrible, so I'll try to explain.

I was in a relationship with my child's mother many years ago when we were both regular heavy drug users. I lost contact with her when I decided to get clean and left the state to go to rehab.

For ten years I never spoke to her or engaged with her in any way and she never made contact with me either. I didn't even know our shared child existed until recently.

So I've been clean for ten years now, she's continued off and on to use drugs. Most recently (when I got custody of our shared child) she was arrested on drug related charges with our child present. She (our child) would have gone to foster care if I hadn't taken custody of her, and of course I did, even though that was the first time I even knew I had a child.

She was bonded out and is waiting for her trial and ever since she got out she has been contacting me almost daily. I have no interest in talking to her about anything but our shared child and she's not calling me or texting me to talk about her or even to her. She says she wants to be friends and didn't have a way to contact me before, which is technically true (although realistically, FOR THE SAKE OF OUR KID, she definitely could've put a little extra effort in there). I can't help but feeling that now that she has my contact information, she's going to continue to use it to her advantage even though I'm not in any way planning to get dragged back down into that hole.

I've tried to tell her that if she wants to talk to our daughter she can and I've tried ignoring her and I've tried telling her I just don't want to go down this path with her but I feel like there's got to be some kind of firm, tactful way I can tell her that I dont want to have any kind of relationship with her that I'm just not thinking of. Does anyone have any advice? I just feel like if I get tied up in this shit in any way that isn't just raising this kid it's going to go down badly but I can't seem to get that across to her and I don't want to be hurtful.

TL;DR: ever since I was inadvertently reconnected with my child's mother, who is a drug addict that I had a relationship with when i, too, was a drug addict, she won't leave me alone. How do I get it across that I don't want anything to do with her without being mean or hurtful?

Submitted November 15, 2019 at 11:04PM by apparentthrowaway79 https://ift.tt/2CLUwmb