I fixed the problem after figuring out what the issue is. It's actually because of the way GGG handles verification of the client to prevent cheating. The datemarked file gets marked by the steam client as protected as long as you have steam installed. If path of exile crashes, at it is infamous for doing, during the client startup when it talks to GGG's servers to get the confirmation for the client version, you can end up with an unverified client that is then removed from the steam library. Because POE client tells steam that this is a write-protected file, as long as you have steam installed you can't delete it, even when steam is not running. Then, because it's no longer recognized, you can't uninstall through steam.

In order to solve this issue, I had to uninstall steam first to remove the background protection on the anticheat file, delete it through command prompt, reinstall steam, then reinstall poe.

So yeah this isn't on me. This is on a really unstable poe client that has no good uninstall options.