Ashley (not her real name) & I went to college together my first year away from home. She had been a student the year before, & had been a part of the friend group that I initially became a part of once I transferred there. I had been warned previously that she was very loud, obnoxious, dramatic, & couldn't be trusted, but in my naiveté I thought I could handle it.
I was wrong. Initially.
Things at first went well. Yes, she was loud, obnoxious, & dramatic, but I didn't see so much that she couldn't be trusted. In fact, she seemed like she could be very trustworthy! But then I started to notice how events that I was present for began to sound...different when they were retold by her. And how she would just look at someone & right there on the spot make up a rumor about them without any prior conversation with them.
Bitch was scary.
In the span of two weeks she wrecked two cars (one of which I was in [which is another story]). It was around this time that she became very attached to this guy, Greg (not even close to his real name). The thing with Greg though was that he had a girlfriend at the time named Hope. However, Hope was best friends with Ashley (you can see where this is going). But before any of that crap came out, first Hope announces to everyone that she's not coming back the next semester. Well, whatever. That happens. But right before finals, Ashley tells certain people in our friend group (not me) that her friend, Jesse (who was in a gang, according to her) had a rival gang going after him & his friends. Which included Ashley. And then that somehow spread to Ashley's friends (which included me, unbeknownst to me).
Then one night before school let out, Ashley came back to her room with her clothes all torn up, saying she had been raped by the rival gang. Oh noes!
So that got the rest of our friends banded together (except for me, who was kept in the dark. Thanks!). The winter term (which lasted two weeks) was when I found out, & at first I was really upset until I began to realize how the story didn't make much sense. After comparing notes with other people, I decided that it wasn't true. And neither was a lot of what she had said, such as another one of my friends hitting her (which I didn't believe for a second). It was also around this time that it came out that Ashley & Greg had been hooking up, which caused a split in the friend group. I ended up going with the people who weren't with Ashley, because my mama didn't raise no fool (sometimes).
The rest of the semester was still pretty dramatic with Ashley still on campus, leaving drama & horror in her hefty wake. By the end of the semester, she & Greg were no longer friends & she was slashing her own tires & blaming him for it (he was even out of town when that happened). Luckily her grades were terrible so she transferred to another school. She was out of my life.
Not so fast!
Ashley began visiting a lot at the end of the next fall semester because Hope returned & they patched things up. Then her cousin, Erica, came into the picture over Christmas break. She befriended a lot of people since she was going to be attending TFC the next semester. It was weird though that Erica only had a Myspace & didn't have a cell phone. In any case, she & Greg (who had also left TFC) began flirting online. Then all of the sudden, Erica is no longer going to school there & Ashley is involved in our lives again because it was just. so. dramatic. I wasn't having it, because by that point I had already figured out with Caitlin that Erica was really Ashley. But it was fun to just string her along, not gonna lie.
It especially became fun when all of the sudden Erica went from a really thin punk girl with brown hair to a more chunky girl with blonde hair & blue eyes.
After the Erica drama died down, I thought everything would be over with her. Until she moved to Toccoa. Are you serious?! And then she tried to get a job at Applebee's! I told the manager not to hire her, but he didn't listen. Eventually, he did tell me he should have. Thank you, Dean.
In that time at Applebee's, she got raped again. Wow. She has terrible luck, doesn't she? She also managed to alienate herself from almost every friend she had, which wasn't shocking. Thankfully, she was gone by the end of the summer (her choice, though I so wanted to see her get fired). She popped up from time to time, but managed to not bring any drama with her. The last time I saw her was in 2009 when I was working over Christmas break. She was visiting (she just never goes away!) & asked me why I had blocked her on Facebook. I told her that being friends with her just caused too much drama & left it at that.
So over time, I definitely learned to handle her better. Especially after her first rape incident. That was also when I learned how batshit crazy some people are.
I also need to add that I left out certain pieces that didn't ultimately impact the outcome of the story. Like how she had "gotten pregnant" before I went to TFC. And how she "had cancer" at one point. And how Jesse "died in a car accident" the semester after her "rape" but then a few weeks later she posted new pictures of herself with him on Facebook. Or how she got Jesse to message me on Facebook & try to start some drama with me about a comment someone had made on a picture I had posted.
And before people flip out & say, "Well, maybe she really was raped!" let me assure you that no, she wasn't. She ended up coming clean about the whole gang drama being a lie.
How do I always attract these people?
