How can I help my girlfriend (we're fortyish) who is suffering from severe clinical depression and has other issues?

I was head over heals in love with her twenty years ago but she was a total recluse, even though she was lonely and depressed even then. She was very non social. At some point she got on disability and had surgery (it was for imaginary problems with her sinuses) which gave her chronic pain issues.

She went back home to live with her parents, who abused her emotionally for ten or eleven years and lived partially off her disability check. Eventually she contacted me on her own and I started helping her as a friend. We fell in love, while I was recovering from a gunshot wound (extremely violent robbery). This woman and I fell in love and she needs what I was perfectly willing to give. I see hope in my future and our future but she is continually depressed and refuses medicine or counseling.

When she was being physically abused by her parents, she became homeless temporarily and I myself went broke trying to provide for her. I wouldn’t mind taking her in if/when I am financially solvent and have space for her.

In the mean time, however, she talks/texts incessantly about desiring death (she says she is not suicidal) and blames all of her problems on the surgery she had eleven years ago. She says she is in chronic pain but refuses pain meds or neuropathic or antidepressent meds. She refuses counseling because she doesn’t like opening up to people she doesn’t know.

People say, “thank God she has you” (me, that is), yet I don’t seem to be much help. She continually talks about wanting death and her life being worthless. Indeed, she has been psychologically abused by her parents (really—not just what she says—her parents are NOT good people and took advantage of her and her check). Right now, she is living with her sister and brother-in-law—but that situation is wearing thin—but working for now).

This woman needs professional help but blames her problems on her surgery/pain. She refuses meds and counseling.

One other peculiarity is that she seems to think everyone is mistreating her—even me, for not being there more often. I am there every other day because I have a life of my own and need to work towards goals of becoming financially solvent again. But she needs my physical presence all the time. That is something I cannot give.

I can sympathize and even find endearing the desire to be with someone all the time, but she seems to think I am neglecting or ignoring her needs when we are apart.

In recent weeks, I cannot even get her out of the house where she is staying. It takes her hours, four to six hours, just to get ready (“clean up”) and we end up doing very little because it gets late and everything closes.

I have goals and dreams of my own that aren’t getting fulfilled, and things I have to do if I am to provide for her in the future. But she demands my presence every available moment and even moments I can’t be. She is adamant and stubborn and unyielding. Through it all, I love her, and cannot walk away from this.

I want to add that she WAS physically and psychologically abused by her parents (that is NOT just what she says)— her pain is neuropathic but she thinks the surgery is the physical cause and that reconstructive surgery will help (surgeons and specialists say no—and that the pain is neuropathic or psychological).

What can I do to help?