Trashley: Forty-Four
Berlin
Disclaimer and trigger warning: mental health, suicidal ideation
Ashley had checked herself into a clinic under the guise of working on herself. But once I read her medical files, it became clear she went for the optics and had no intention of doing the work. She was no different than a politician holding a baby for a photo op—This’ll make me look good— before tossing it back to its mother.
During a virtual therapy session, I told Ashley that I’d been talking to Cecelia, and we were sharing everything. Until then, I think Ashley believed she could pull off a double life. But she didn’t have the skills to close the deal, and now that her lies had caught up with her, her two worlds crumbled to the ground.
After almost three days, Ashley was discharged from Psych! USA, where she had fooled everyone into thinking she was a-okay and probably just needed a nap.
With Ashley on the loose in Minnesota, Cecelia and I tried to predict her next move. We figured she would either unleash on Cecelia, or hyper-fixate on winning me back. We didn’t know what version of Ashley to expect, so we braced for the incoming chaos and kept in touch in case anything happened.
The last time I spoke to Ashley, she threatened to “make Cecelia pay for this,” and told me it was my fault her children would be taken away, and Karma was coming for me. But no one was taking her children away. Her children were safe and loved, cared for by Cecelia, who had been solo-parenting since Ashley moved to Los Angeles.
I still had Ashley’s location on, and since she was such a skilled liar, I had to double-check everything she told me. Once I learned she was discharged, I followed her location back to her apartment. I told Cecelia where she was. At least with Ashley’s location on, I could keep an eye on her.
Now that Ashley was out in the streets, she was blowing up my phone.
No thanks.
“You need to stop focusing on me and focus on yourself and your kids instead,” I said.
To Ashley, this meant she had to put on a performance and act like super-mom, another trait she stole from Cecelia.
She sent me photos of the kids and Facetimed me with them, Ashley knew her kids were my weakness. They were so adorable and precious, and I hated that Ashley used them as bait to get me to respond to her. Cecelia was right; Ashley was hyper-fixated on winning me back: she spent nearly every waking moment disrupting my life.
“I want a fresh start. It’s not too late to get back together.”
Ashley went through her usual repertoire, sending flower deliveries and managing to creep me out from thousands of miles away.
She made camping reservations at Bass Lake, “It’ll be just like old times.”
I declined.
I was done being alone in the wilderness with Ashley. I pictured her banging the back of my head with a cast iron skillet as soon as I turned my back on her. Cecelia was worried she might lure me back to the dark side.
No. Way.
I’d go camping with the Blair Witch over Ashley any day.
I told Ashley that I wanted to be left alone and disabled my read receipts, but that only made things worse. The more I ignored her, the more she demanded my attention.
Ashley knew she had to pull something incredible from her dwindling bag of tricks.
“I got us tickets to Berlin,” she said and sent me the link to two business class tickets that totaled nearly fourteen thousand dollars.
I had no idea where this money came from.
“Come, come to Berlin with me. We always talked about going, let’s just do this. It will fix us.”
I should donate my brain to science because I actually considered going. “I do love Europe, and I really love flying business class to get there. Plus I’m part German, so that would be a good chance to explore my roots and see some distant relatives. Plus the fashion and the buildings, I could harness my inner Atomic Blonde.”
I shook my head and snapped out of it, feeling as if I had been temporarily hypnotized.
What the hell was I thinking? I can’t go to Berlin with Ashley. That would be insane.
I understood Cecelia’s worry that Ashley could lure me back with enticing offers. Ashley was like a Time Share salesman, persistent and impossible to shake. But no fucking way was I falling for it again. I needed Ashley to understand that this was over, and I would never go anywhere again with her, not even Trader Joe’s, let alone Berlin.
I canceled the tickets.
No matter what I said to Ashley about our relationship ending, she still bombarded me with calls, texts, and Facetimes.
My therapist (who is smart) told me (who is dumb) that the best thing to do would be to block Ashley on everything so she didn’t have a way to contact me. I ignored her advice so I could keep an eye on Ashley’s location, because a tiny part of me thought I could get her help so she wouldn’t lose everything. And I also really liked Cecelia. There was never any tension or any unpleasantness between us. We sistered up and had each other’s backs. Plus, we were still unearthing a year’s worth of lies.
“Why didn’t your parents respond to my text?” I asked Ashley, after she called nine times in a row.
“My parents love you. They said something about a lawyer,” she said.
“That’s all they picked up on from that entire text? That I had a lawyer?”
Sure, I just told you your daughter is threatening suicide, violence, and revenge porn, but yeah, ignore those parts and worry about a lawyer.
Cecelia had been begging Ashley’s parents to get Ashley help, too. Pleading with them to do the right thing. Even after everything Ashley had done to Cecelia—cheating, lying, gaslighting, and abandoning her with a newborn and a toddler—Cecelia still wanted to help Ashley. She had a heart of gold, and was the most selfless person I’d ever encountered.
Ashley’s parents ignored her, too. That was their power move.
As if ignoring us would make us disappear, thereby getting rid of their Ashley problem.
It was clear that Cecelia and I were the only ones trying to get Ashley help.
Meanwhile, Ashley descended into madness.
I went to Joshua Tree with Kirsten, thinking that Ashley would leave me alone since Kirsten was there, but that wasn’t the case.
At the farmers market, my phone dinged. “I can fix this.”
Picking out tequila at Desierto Alto, “Please don’t ignore me. It hurts a lot.”
Picking a cholla cactus from my hair, “I can’t stand you being mad at me.”
Taking a soundbath at the Integratron, “Can you please call me? Please baby.”
Ashley was draining both my energy and my phone battery. No matter how much I ignored her, she persisted. So I finally tried to make things as clear as I could. I texted, “This isn’t salvageable.”
She Facetimed me immediately.
“I found your Bumble,” she said.
I almost forgot I created an account.
“Did you?” I asked, “Prove it,” since she’s a liar.
She sent me a screenshot of my profile as if she had caught me cheating.
“And?” I said, “So what? You were on Bumble the entire time we dated.”
My Bumble account sent Ashley on a tirade into another dimension. She couldn’t stand the thought of me with anyone else. She had done the same thing to Cecelia a few months earlier after she found out Cecelia had messaged a few times with a woman on Hinge WHILE ASHLEY WAS LIVING WITH ME.
Her hypocrisy was next level.
Ashley called me eighty-nine times that day.
I wanted to block her, but I knew I needed proof she was harassing me in case I had to get a restraining order, and the system wasn’t set up to protect me. I knew I would literally have to get murdered by Ashley before the cops would do anything.
Ashley bought a ticket to LA, ignoring my boundaries after I had told her to stay away from me and that she wasn’t welcome here.
She didn’t care.
The next morning, Ashley sent me a four-minute video monologue saying she was going to leave me alone and go to a museum in Chicago that day. By this time, I knew her tricks. She would never go to a museum, especially alone. She was going to Chicago to go on a date with someone she had met on Bumble. I called her out, setting off a third world war.
Ashley Facetimed me from her car.
When I answered, she screamed, “I’m going to find the biggest tree I can, and I’m going to drive my car into it!”
I plead with her not to hurt herself, to think about her kids, and not to do anything dangerous.
I texted Cecelia while I stayed on the phone with Ashley.
“She says she’s going to drive her car into a tree and kill herself, I’m tracking her location.”
Cecelia had a neighbor watch the kids and jumped in her car to try and intercept Ashley. I told her Ashley’s general location, but the map wasn’t detailed enough for me to give her an exact address. Plus I wasn’t familiar with Minnesota, besides the mall.
“She’s near a building by Lake Drive,” I wrote.
“I think she’s by the school,” Cecelia replied.
Meanwhile, I stayed on the phone with Ashley.
“I see her,” Cecelia said.
“WHY DID YOU TELL CECELIA WHERE I AM?!” Ashley screamed before hanging up on me.
Then I called Cecelia.
“She just sped up and almost hit me!” Cecelia said.
“We have to call the police.”
I looked at Ashley’s location and she disabled it when she realized Cecelia and I were working as a team.
Cecelia called the police on her end, and I called from mine. I told them Ashley was suicidal and threatening to drive into a tree.
I texted her mom and she didn’t respond—mother of the year.
I called Ashley and said, “I called the police. You need to get off the road right now.”
Her tone changed. “I know how to get out of a welfare check,” she said before hanging up.
Was this a game to her?
An hour went by before I got a call from the Minnesota police department. They put me in contact with one of the officers who was standing with Ashley. They had tracked down her apartment building and flagged her over when she got there.
“We’re with Ashley right now. And she appears fine.” The officer assured me.
“What do you mean? She was screaming and crying and threatening to kill herself for the last five hours,” I said.
“Well, she told us she just ran to Starbucks and was heading home to do a puzzle.”
That bitch never did puzzles, she stole that from me.
“I have audio,” I said, since I was still recording everything.
I sent the cops a clip of Ashley yelling, “I’m going to hit a tree and die!”
After they listened to the clip, the officer said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but she seems fine. She’s probably just manipulating you.”
First, she fooled the doctors at the clinic, and then she fooled the cops.
Ooh, now I hated her.
She had stolen yet another beautiful weekend from me, calling me eighty-nine times on Saturday, and threatening to crash into a tree on Sunday, all because she found out I was on Bumble, and I called her out on going on a date in Chicago. And I’m sure Ashley told the Chicago woman, “Sorry I can’t make it, I got a flat tire and I was roofied in vegas and my Grandma died,” or something along those lines, her excuses and lies were endless. The reality was she was threatening to drive into a tree. Poor tree (their leaves are their hair) and her wife and ex-girlfriend were the only people on the entire planet trying to stop her.
Ashley sent me a screenshot of her ticket to Los Angeles. I told her not to come here, but that didn’t matter. I told her to change plans and head to Bakersfield, but she refused. I told her parents that if she came back to my place, I would call the police. I talked her into sharing her location with me again, which gave me some ease. I was officially drained, and I wanted my life back. And I had to accept that Ashley was heading my way, and nothing I said would change her mind.
Cecelia was on stand-by for whatever was about to go down.
After listening to Sweet Bobby, I think the best end to this story would be you saying you've been catfishing us all along, and that Ashley doesn't exist. I would laugh and be very relieved!
I'm really trying not to yell at you because really I absolutely don't know you at all but stop fucking engaging with her. Bless and release. She's not going to kill herself she loves herself too much to drive into a tree. She's a manipulative psychopath and you are being so malleable. I would really like to shake the crap out of you but that seems kind of violent and I don't actually know you and I know this happened a while ago. Like I get it with Cecilia because she has children with Ashley but you are being unhinged. And I mean that with all the love.