Blended: Hello Pot, It’s Kettle Calling
“Often what people don’t say or leave out, tells the real story.”
It has always amazed me to come across a walking contradiction. It’s like the “thing” you KNOW happens, yet when you experience it for yourself you’re still somehow always shocked. Of course by walking contradiction I do mean an actual person. Now imagine you not only came across someone who contradicted everything they said but also omitted and over embellished in everything they said as well? You ever hear someone tell a story you were present for and while telling the story they omit so many details and add so many extras that by the end of it all it’s like hearing a completely different story altogether? That’s exactly how I would feel when I caught wind of this “story” she was telling. Let me explain… It would be one night minutes before midnight I receive a text from her.
Her: I know it’s late but I am working on a page and sent requests to all of my contacts and it sent one to you that was not intentional so I felt the need to reach out and let you know there was no funny business going on. Again sorry so late.
Me: Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t get anything so it’s fine.
… I hadn’t gotten anything yet.
However, eventually, I would see some page she had created to promote this “story” of hers and I probably would have never given her little project a second thought but then the messages started coming in…
Girl did you see that story she’s tellin’ about ya’ll?
She making [husband] look crazy!
Did that really happen?
Has he ever hit you?
Based on the questions alone I was shocked. What exactly was she saying? For me to get the kind of questions I was getting it had to be pretty bad. After throwing a few incredulous responses back I started getting sent enough excerpts and screenshots to piece it all together. It might as well have been a work of outright fiction and to be honest I felt like I was in an episode of Punked. Where was Ashton? This went beyond just a simple lie to cover the truth. She was straight up trying to defame his character while simultaneously making herself look like the abused ex-wife. What was even more astonishing was the number of people who believed it. Had any of these people ever read a GOOD book? To hold a story together effectively there have to be quite a few things present. You have to build a base of great characters, plot, setting, point of view, theme, and style. Not only that, but details are also key! A story without details is just a conversation in passing. Reading parts of her story felt like watching someone try to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with holy bread. It just didn’t hold up. The amount of detail left out made me wonder how no one else had asked questions. Let me give you an example.
I was even drug by my arm across the floor of a club by [Nickname for Husband];
That’s it. Literally one sentence. No explanation before, no elaboration on what led to this after, no explanation on what happened during. NOTHING. Nothing else but this one sentence. The crazy part about this one sentence is the story behind it. One he’d told me when we’d first started dating.
It was our first date ever if I remember correctly and after spending hours daily on the phone with him, talking about any and everything, I finally agreed to go on a date with him. We were in the car on the way to a restaurant for lunch when Cyclone by Baby Bash came on the radio. I’d never seen him change a song so fast. He turned to me and said…
Him: I hate that song.
Me: Smirking, “Why?”
When we got to the restaurant and were seated he told me. It happened one night they’d gone out to a club with a group of her friends. He couldn’t remember exactly what for but it might’ve been someone’s birthday. Anyway, while in the club she had wandered off and disappeared. He couldn’t find her anywhere for a minute. When he finally did she was on the dance floor grinding up against her ex-boyfriend. The SAME ex-boyfriend she’d cheated on him with repeatedly and from who he’d found many inappropriate text messages and emails between. The song “Cyclone” was playing. He walked up to her, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her away from the dude. Understandably so. Yet in her story “I was even drug by my arm across the floor of a club by [Nickname for Husband] ” was all she could put. She portrayed a vision of him dragging her, kicking and screaming across the dance floor like she was a broom catching all the dirt and for absolutely NO reason at all. Why not tell the whole story? This is what she did though. This was what her “story” was full of. Anything to paint herself as the victim. How had this man been SO abusive and violent yet she was the one who had lost custody and had multiple arrests under her belt? Why fight for YEARS to get back someone who was THAT awful? Again, I wondered how many people were smart enough to put 2 and 2 together. Of course there were other parts that were very telling as well. For example this “dream” she had.
In my dream [Nickname for Husband] had taken our son, and left me for another woman. They were taunting me. Tormenting me with all the demons I struggled with. They were taunting me with my fears of being a bad mom, having a failed marriage, being unloved; becoming my mom. I couldn’t see the woman’s face, but her complexion and hair were so clear. It seemed so real, I literally felt heartbreak and devastation. I was so desperate and begging him to stay. Reaching out to touch him and our son, but they wouldn’t let me close enough. The woman just kept laughing at me; an evil laugh. She had taken them from me and I had nothing left.
This wasn’t a dream at all. This was the reality of what she actually saw disguised as a dream. All of her actions up to this point had shown as much. But to disguise her altered reality as a “dream”??? Brilliant! No one could ever see through that right? ::insert eye roll::
Even the way she talked about her arrest, although wildly inaccurate, was victimized.
I walked to his car, keys in hand, and scratched every ounce of pain into that shiny black paint. He came out of the school to find me keying his car and started yelling and cussing at me. He tried to wrestle the keys out of my hand and we began fighting; both of us swinging and punching. I was pulling his hair, scratching his face, and pulling his shirt so hard the collar ripped. He called the police on me, once he was finally free from my grip. I sat on the step and waited for the officers and just cried.
The officer asked if I wanted them to take him, but let me know they had to take me due to the visible marks on my husband. After all of this, I still didn’t want him in trouble. I didn’t want to risk his job as a fireman, or risk our son not having either one of us. I still was more concerned about him and our son than I was about myself. I still loved him, more than I loved myself. Through my tears, I whispered “no” and the officer cuffed me and led me to his patrol vehicle.
How vastly different from the story I’d told you previously. Now, if you’re just stumbling upon this story you won’t know what I mean. But if you want to, take a look at this story first.
Let’s do some quick deductions here. First and foremost, he is a BLACK man. #BLM! So, let’s just marinate for a minute on how black men are typically treated by police while never really ever being given the benefit of doubt. Now… In how many stories or situations have you EVER seen a woman beaten by a man and the officer ASK if she wants him arrested??? Never. An officer will arrest that man even AS she begs him not to… “we began fighting; both of us swinging and punching…” ???? How many men do YOU know can fight and swing at a woman and leave absolutely no mark? Again, such a contradiction. Like, did ANYBODY even wonder or come to any of the same logical reasoning?
Seeing her try to publicly crucify my husband’s character had me pissed. Every desire to be nice, to be kind… immediately left. Even more disturbing is why she would put this out there for their son to see. In all the years of all her antics all I’d ever seen was my husband try to protect their son from seeing her for who she really was at her worst. He did his best to guard his mind against seeing her completely lose hers. He cared how his son saw his mother. Yet it would seem she had no care in the world for how her son saw his father. She did her best to tell this story to anyone who would listen but it wasn’t long before it would completely fizzle out.
There is something I will say though… The vast majority of her story was about being molested by her stepfather, my husband playing only a very small part. It was like reading flashes of a half-remembered memory. Details, I could see, weren’t her strong suit. She was one of those people who told stories based on how they felt about a situation. Not what actually happened. What would be most unfortunate is that while the stories about her molestation were extremely disturbing, it would make me wonder how much of it was truth and how much a lie. I felt horrible. Molestation is nothing to play about. You should always be on the victim’s side. If what she spoke of happened then how could she not be broken? But that’s the thing about embellishing, omission and dishonesty. When you make a habit of it people start to question EVERYTHING you say. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Anyway, now you see why I’d said previously that she’d talked about her sexual abuse very publicly. Had she not, I would never have mentioned it. However, knowing does paint a better picture.
When my husband caught wind of how viciously she was trying to paint his character he too was pissed. He briefly considered a lawsuit for defamation. He had plenty to hold up in a case. I mean she used his middle name for goodness sake. It was clear she'd not read up on how NOT to get sued when talking about other people. However, at the end of the day it wasn’t like her story was going anywhere. Nothing would come of it so the legal fees weren’t even worth it. But from this point on, as if he didn’t already despise her enough, it would grow into more. It would be a short time later I catch wind of something else. Her husband had rejoined the military and was looking at relocation and deployment. This information came to me around December and I remember immediately thinking uh oh… I waited a few weeks to see if my husband would bring it up, wondering if she would warn him. But he said nothing. He had no clue what was coming. I had to warn him. It was starting to look a lot like we were headed for a custody battle. A custody battle she was trying to launch as a surprise attack. Although I had the information I wasn’t sure how factual it was so I threw it out lightly in conversation. It was a little before Christmas.
Me: Hey babe, what do you think would happen if her husband was relocated or deployed?
The thought seemed to immediately bother him.
Him: I don’t know but I don’t even want to think or talk about that.
… and that was that. Conversation done. I decided to wait until the factual information arrived on our doorstep. But it was then I started planning. At this point our son was with us for weeks at a time only visiting her home a few times out of the month. I started documenting all the days he was with us. I had a gut feeling we’d need this information later.
Months would pass where I could barely look at her without spite or just laugh at the sheer lie of it all. She was really trying to run with this story. But as God often does he somehow got into my heart and softened it. I mean, at some point someone had to be the bigger person right?
When I tell you I tried literally EVERYTHING to get along with this woman, I REALLY tried. I had decided to move past that horrible excuse for a story and still try to have normal, positive communication with her.
TEXT
Me: Hey did [Son] text you about me picking him up later?
Her: Hey yes he did he said 5:30. His brother has an appt this evening can I grab him from the house after
Me: OK cool. I just didn’t want to pick him up without knowing for sure that you were OK with it. His message to me wasn’t clear on whether or not you knew and I had told him to check with you first.
Her: Oh ok. Yea that’s fine with me. I appreciate you checking with me. Thank you
Me: Yeah of course no problem! Nothing worse than showing up to your child’s school and they’re not there.
Her: Very true...instant heart attack
Me: Right! Lol ok 👌🏽
Her: I’ll text when I’m omw
This was pretty much how our very few and far between text messages went for a couple of months. Then track season started again. It would be at one of the first meets back I see her up close and face to face in almost a year. It was weird. Things had been so cordial but I didn’t know… Should I say hi? Should I smile and nod? What should I do? His races were over before I even had a chance to come to a decision so I got my things together to leave. I hugged one of the parents I knew well goodbye and she just so happen to be standing next to her. All the conflict in my mind had me so completely perplexed that I did not decide at all. I hugged my friend, said bye, and walked away without saying a word to his mother. When I got in my car I felt bad. I debated asking her to meet me in the parking lot for a chat but decided against it. Instead I sent her a text.
Me: Hey, I just want you to know I’m not purposely ignoring you or trying to be rude. Honestly things just feel a little awkward to me.
Her: I didn’t think you were
She added in a text following
Her: We just don’t speak and that’s ok. I’m not bothered by it
I wasn’t sure how to take her response. I was tired of the faux niceties. We’d been through this so many times before and it never worked. I responded.
Me: Ok cool. As long as you know there is no ill intent.
At the very least, I didn’t want her walking away thinking I was purposely trying to be rude and ignore her to her face. Little did I know a shit storm was brewing and just around the corner. We were about to be served.