The House of Glass

My time living with a TTRPG creator

This is a recounting of my living with someone in the TTRPG industry for a little under 2 years. At the behest of those involved, names have been changed.

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We met on Reddit of all places.

They messaged me as a post-admirer. They said they were writing their campaign setting to be more like mine. They said they were an artist. I commissioned a map from them of my setting at the time. We were in a discord together with other folks from the subreddit. We talked about games a lot. Played in a few together. We left the subreddit discord cause it got kinda uncomfortable. They asked me to write something for a new zine they were doing. They were wonderful at graphic design–I had never seen anything like it. I said yes. I wrote a dungeon. They said they made a server for the zine and invited me to it. I joined.

It was a small server. Maybe six people. All people I had seen on Twitter to some degree. All people who had something to say and who said it well. They felt differently about games than I was used to from reading OSR blogs. I got to know all of them quite well. Met most of them in person. Talked to them every day for the remainder of my twenties. They were my friends.

But Ash was my best friend. We designed together, designing different projects and discussing them as I started my full-time career. We played video games together, talking in VC for hours. When we were both bored at work, we’d just sit in VC and stream or chat or watch movies. We talked about media a lot and about art. We had different opinions about a lot of stuff. They thought a lot of things were “stupid.” They were very critical. All of us on the server were, though. It wasn’t out of the ordinary. We were all critical and harsh and thought ourselves outsiders. And we were. Most of us.

I visited Ash for the first time, and we got along really well irl. I went and visited them. Stayed in their apartment. Lived with them for several unconnected weekends during the summer after a bad breakup. We had known each other for years at this point. We went to a convention together to meet a lot of the other folks from the server. When I cuddled with one of the other folks, I talked to Ash about it. When my long term relationship was collapsing, Ash was there for me. When I wanted to move, Ash also wanted to move and have a roommate. We made plans to move in together. I would move to Ohio, and we’d find a place together and be roommates and work on games together, and I would get away from my ex and my old life.

For a very intense period of my life, Ash was one of the few people I could rely on. They were a good friend to me. And the space they created on discord had given me a community, even if it was only online.

I told them I wanted a cat, and they said “I want to live with you and your cat.”

The first time I felt there was something off was during a visit, after we had already decided to live together but before the real planning. A new person had been invited to the server (it was an invite-only server of about 20 people, maybe) and he was easy to make friends with. His name was Otto. Otto and I started flirting instantly. He was the first person I had flirted with in any real capacity since my ex, and we really got each other. He lived close enough and wanted to visit Ash and me. We were all going to stay at Ash’s together and explore the city and see if, maybe, the three of us could look for a place together instead. The thinking being as simple as, “three people would make it cheaper for all of us and would also mean we’d each know one extra person in a new city.”

The night of the visit, Ash tells me that they’ve been flirting with Otto and that they want to spend some time with him, just the two of them. My response was “yeah, no problem.” It made sense to me and like, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem like a big deal. But the issue was when, about an hour later, Ash messages me and tells me to come on over. Says that they misunderstood. I got into my car with a packed bag so fast. I was so excited. I was going to meet my new friend, Otto. I was going to be with my maybe-new-roommates. We were all going to get along and be friends, and my new life was going to begin.

I get there and ask Ash if they’re okay. They assure me they are. “He likes you,” they tell me. We talk about it briefly. “Don’t have sex on my couch,” he tells me. I wasn’t thinking about that at all but told them I wouldn’t do that to them. They assure me they’re okay. We go inside. I meet Otto. Ash goes to bed. Otto and I cuddle on the couch and talk. Go to sleep. Wake up on the couch the next day and Ash is acting weird. Like, something feels off and I can’t explain what it is. But we all pile into Ash’s car and explore a bit. Go get groceries to cook a dinner that night. Go see the sights. I still feel like something’s wrong and I can’t figure out what it is. It was a nice day.

That night, Otto and I are cuddling on the couch again. Otto touches me. Slides his hand into my pants with my consent. My body reacts with panic. I become supremely uncomfortable in my own skin. I get a flashback of the man holding me down and touching me just a few months prior. I tell Otto I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m finding it hard to communicate. Shutting down. And Otto freaks out. He thinks it's his fault. Thinks I hate him. Thinks a lot of things. I don’t know exactly. I had known he was Bipolar, but I had no experience with that. I didn’t know that this is what it looked like. But it was happening, he was Not Doing Okay, and I was so confused because I was having some sort of panic-inducing response simply to being touched in a way that I had wanted. It was a very confusing moment. For everyone. I don’t remember a lot after that. I remember laying on the couch while Otto hit himself in frustration. I remember Ash and Otto going outside to smoke, and they came back talking about how they wanted to self harm. Ash was also not doing okay. He and Otto were sort-of-bonding in this shared panic they were experiencing. Ash’s, I would find out later, from being rejected by Otto, and Otto’s from being rejected in that moment by me. I sat silent on the floor that night and remembered being a child, sleeping on the floor while parents yelled a wall’s depth away from me. Paralyzed. Unable to move. “I need to leave,” I texted a friend. “I’ll call right now and say someone’s in the emergency room,” she sent back.

I didn’t leave for another night.

Ash messages me the day I leave. Then Otto messages me. A lot. And Ash messages about Otto messaging me. And I don’t know what’s happening, so I can’t respond. I ask them both to please leave alone so I can collect my thoughts. To please give me a moment. And they don’t. I have to ask again and again before I’m finally given more than an hour of time between their messages. So I can breathe. So I can think.

I tell Ash that I’m sorry Otto liked me. They’re mad at me for not telling them about Otto and I flirting before the trip. I tell them it was none of their business and that I didn’t care if Otto and them flirted. I told them that was normal and it wasn’t a big deal. I tell them that they were both freaking out and definitely having some issues. Ash really likes Otto. Ash really wants to date Otto. For their feelings to lead to something. Otto does not want that. Not at all. Then, suddenly, they are both telling me things between them are okay. That they are both okay. That they are both over it and want to live together with me still. They are saying this a lot. I tell them that I will visit with both of them again because I still really like them. I’ve been through a lot with Ash, and Otto was understanding when I talked to him about the night of my bad reaction. I tell them I will visit again and they assure me things will be normal and OK.

So we all go to Ash’s again. I stay for one night and can’t handle the anxiety-inducing atmosphere.

I leave.

They both want me to live with one of them or the other. I tell them I don’t know what to decide. Otto tells me they were kicked from the discord server and I find out from him and Ash that Ash was not okay with the entire situation. I find out that Ash still wanted and was pressuring Otto to have sex and date them. I find this out, and I tell Ash that what they did and how they acted is abhorrent and gross. I want to leave the server, but Otto tells me it’s okay. Tells me to stay. We don’t really talk about Ash after that. Otto and I remain friends. At a much later date, a year and some change after that, Otto tells me that Ash has pressured other people like that before. At least one other person in the industry. We’re in the car with a friend, Moon, and Moon recounts some information that backs all of this up. “They’re a sex pest,” Moon says. I feel the bottom fall out under my stomach.

After the second failed trip to Ash’s, I decided to move forward with living with Ash. This is after a month or so go by. I was staying with family on borrowed time since my ex and I broke up. I was not doing all that great. I just started HRT at the Planned Parenthood. I was starting a new chapter in my life. Otto and I were good friends. Things with Ash felt normal again. I wanted to believe that none of it was all that bad. That the situation was obviously fucked up and weird and that if they were both okay about the whole thing, then so was I.

I also left the server. There was an incident with Ash online that caused them to delete social media, and I thought they were being a coward. I told them as much. I told them that I think the behavior the server had developed (or maybe always had) was toxic, and I didn’t like it. I told them that I couldn’t be there anymore. I left. Ash asked me to come back for months. I kept saying no. I kept saying I didn’t need it. And every day I was away from there, I felt a little different. A little better. My life improved after leaving. My mentality did, at least. My mental well-being. I didn’t hate my job anymore. I told Ash I would think about coming back and then eventually I said “no, I won’t be coming back.” And sometime after we had moved in together, they stopped asking.

I am asking myself why I decided to move in with Ash after the situation with them and Otto, along with the decision to leave the server that we had become friends on, and I don’t really have an answer. I think I wanted to believe people when they told me that things were better, or that things were okay, even if they didn’t feel like it. Maybe I was too afraid to say no at that point. Maybe I didn’t have any other options. Maybe I was scared. Maybe I didn’t want to care as much as I should have. Maybe I wanted to believe Ash was better than that. Maybe I gave them too much credit and it led to someone getting hurt. Maybe I felt guilty. It was a mistake. I can see that now and that sort of hindsight is present in the retelling. It’s impossible for it to not. There were so many things I didn’t know at the time. So many more things I would only learn later.

The move-in day was shit.

The play-by-play: we both arrive in the city to get our keys and are told by our new landlord that the place smells right now because the night before they “redid the floors” but they have all the windows open, so the smell should clear up and it should be good. We’re both pissed. We arrive and start unloading. The floor of our apartment is sticky with whatever they used to “redo the floors.” It smells abhorrent. We don’t know what else to do, so we unload and sleep because we’re exhausted. The next day, it still smells. It’s still sticky. We begin emailing, and it becomes a back-and-forth war to get the landlord to admit that what they did wasn’t good. This process involved calling the Floor People and getting confirmation that the stuff was poisonous, and we shouldn’t be breathing in that apartment for the next 72 hours. We leave the apartment immediately and get an AirBnB. The situation is “resolved” by them comping a month of our rent. I’m exhausted at this point. I can’t keep fighting them in emails and phone calls. Ash had given up at that point and was telling me to give up. That maybe it wasn’t that bad. That maybe we deserved it.

We get through that together. We explore the city together. We find this diner that we go to almost every morning. We become regulars at this diner. They know our names at this diner. They probably think we’re a couple at this diner. We have a lot of quiet mornings and long conversations at this diner. We are both working, and we are going to be publishing things, but we’re also eating at this diner.

And that’s where Moon enters my life. I had met Moon once before, during one of my Ash-trips when we went to the renaissance fair. We met Moon and Thom and Michelle. They were all really cool people. I was glad Ash had friends in the city and that their friends seemed to like me. But Moon didn’t really enter my life until we invited them to go to the diner with us. We had breakfast and made plans to spend the day together. Just the three of us. Ash had told me confidentially before that, that they had a crush on Moon. They went kayaking earlier that year with Moon and a bunch of other people, and they were friends. That’s what Ash had said.

So Moon, Ash, and I pile into Ash’s car and go shopping. We’re going to Half Price Books, we’re going to a cat rescue, we’re going to a vintage clothing shop. Ash is having a horrible time. They hate it. They hate everything we’re doing. “Why do they like Moon,” I’m asking myself. Moon and I bond over Say Anything. Ash gets visibly upset at us liking the same band. Ash says there’s nothing wrong and they aren’t upset. I believe them because I don’t know what else to do.

“I really wish I could pull that off, but I know how people perceive me. They still kinda perceive me as masculine,” I am saying at one point.

“Not at all,” Moon replies. “They most they could say is androgynous at best.” I’m very touched. No one has ever complimented me like that since I started transitioning. Moon was the first person I feel like to see me as a woman. To only meet me as a woman and to only see me as that. It felt really good.

“I wish someone would say something like that about me,” Ash says, kind of too-quiet but also loud enough for us to hear. Moon and I share a look. I don’t know what to feel.

By the end of the day, Moon and I are both feeling how uncomfortable everything is becoming. But we turn in at Moon’s place to smoke weed and watch a movie. Ash really, really wants us to watch their favorite movie. They think no one else likes it. This is a massive deal to them that we watch this movie. Or, that Moon watches it and likes it. We watch about thirty minutes of it before Ash gets upset that we aren’t reacting the way they want us to and turns it off. We leave.

Moon and I text. We hang out. They take me on a small adventure. We talk very candidly. We are spending a lot of time together and talking to each other every night. They recommend me the book that changes my life. I feel very close to them and very safe with them. “You don’t drain my battery,” they tell me. We just lay on their floor and watch YouTube videos that make me cry laughing and get so high we fall asleep. Or, I fall asleep on their couch.

One night I come home from sleeping over, and Ash is mad at me. They won’t say why. That night I go over to Moon’s again and Ash messages me a few hours later. They say they’ve been missing me and wanna go get dinner. So I drive home and get in Ash’s car. They are boiling mad at me. Gripping the wheel and driving fast. Not saying anything. I feel duped. Tricked. I ask them if we have a problem or something and they say “I hope not.” We get some takeout and go home and I feel trapped.

Sometime before this they had messages Moon to tell them how they feel. To ask if they wanted to go on a date. Moon had turned them down. And then Moon and I started hanging out. And Ash couldn’t take it. They thought we were fucking. It’s none of their business if we did but we didn’t. We were friends. Moon was my first friend in a new city, in a new state. Moon was the first new friend to treat me like a woman. Moon meant a lot to me and Ash perverted it.

I don’t know what started the conversation, but we got into an argument about it. I told them that Moon and me hanging out has nothing to do with them. That we aren’t hooking up but that was none of their business. That they were my friend. My first friend here. I told Ash all of this and I was so upset with them and they crumpled and said they were sorry and that they were upset that they messed things up with Moon. I didn’t know what to say about that. They wanted me to help patch things up between Moon and them. I didn’t know what to say about that either. But I tried. I talked to Moon. Moon told me what happened. That Ash was weird and pressured Moon to go on a date. That Ash was very passive-aggressive in online public spaces that they shared. They recounted to me the night Ash messaged them and was creepy to them and didn’t listen to a hard boundary that Moon had set. They recounted that after they had reaffirmed that boundary, Ash got on discord and posted about getting blackout drunk because of the rejection. Moon told me all of their gripes with Ash and there wasn’t a single one I could refute. I was also mad at them at this point. But Ash also cried and hugged me and said they were sorry. I was also on a lease with them at this point. I had strapped myself to them on purpose and I was beginning to kick myself for it.

Moon and I kept hanging out. I burnt them a CD and lied to Ash about who it was for. Ash said they were better, but that was the first time I consciously noticed I was trying to stop them from spiraling again. That I was avoiding telling them things because I didn’t want them to buy another bottle of alcohol and lose themselves for a week.

Moon would later call Ash a sex pest. Moon would later yell at Ash in a public discord server due to their shitty behavior. Moon would say, “Ash enters every space and belittles everyone and everything they like and then wonders why no one wants to hang out with them.” I understood that. I remember being in Ash’s server. Moon just put words to the behavior that eventually drove me out.

This was related to the Moon incident, but I don’t remember where it falls chronologically: I was working and trying to save money one week and Ash approached me and asked me to go to the diner. I said no, I’m trying to save money. Ash confronted me a little later and asked why I was mad at them and I had to tell them that I wasn’t mad, I was just working and didn’t want to spend money. They would do this a lot. After the Moon stuff it happened a lot more. It ended up reminding me of living with my ex. Of being treated like I was always doing something wrong, or hiding something. That I had this secret ulterior motive to everything I did. I was never taken for my word. I was never listened to. During all of this, when we’d have our conversations or are arguments, they would eventually have a moment of lucidity where they would cry and say they can see what they did was wrong and that they were sorry and I was always there for them and I would tell them they should get some help and they don’t have to deal with this stuff alone but they would never change. Nothing would ever change. Everything I said was not listened to.

I feel I need to explain the atmosphere in the apartment and between us as roommates and friends after this all happened. This was in December and January of 2023/2024. This is when things shifted. This is when I first thought “I don’t want to live with this insecure person anymore.” This was the first time someone else had been near them and felt what I felt and I felt so grateful, because I thought I was crazy for feeling uncomfortable. I thought I was being insecure, or weird, or that I had been mistreating Ash, but Moon helped me see that wasn’t the case. That these outburst of anger and silent-treatment and insecurity were not okay. And more importantly, that no one owed them sex and that publically being an alcoholic as a way to guilt someone because they won’t sleep with you is Not Cool.

Everyone else just let Ash get away with all of this behavior, encouraged it, or just ignored it to a point where, yes, I was unsure if it was a problem. Yes, I was unsure if I was the only one who felt uncomfortable or not. There had been some inklings in the discord server, back when I was a part of it, a few conversations that had us talking in DMs or getting ready to leave the server, but no one else did. The people who I thought had left? All turned out to have been removed by Ash. With purpose. I remember one time, Ash thought we had a “mole” in the server. As if we were being spied on. As if we should be spied on. And I didn’t understand that notion. But Ash thought the things we were saying weren’t appropriate for anyone outside the server. Ash knew what they were saying was wrong, or bad, or upsetting in not-a-good-way. And yet?

So for Moon to sit with me and help me feel seen at that moment, I am forever grateful. Moon also offered their couch to me. Said they could use a new roommate. But there are a lot of other issues involved with that. Issues that would continue to crop up. The primary being that I couldn’t afford two rents and I didn’t feel okay about abandoning Ash. At the time it was because Ash and I had history, a lot of history, but even after that history had been squandered, I still never could see myself just abandoning someone to deal with a lease on their own. Ash couldn’t afford it. Ash struggled with money every month while we lived together. A handful of times they needed longer to pay their share, or told me they couldn’t pay, or were just having money issues. They never really did anything to remedy that, but the thought of abandoning someone, anyone, and leaving them to suffer that consequence just didn’t sit right with me. Even if everyone in my life would eventually be yelling the same thing.

Things in the apartment would return to normal after a week or so after an outburst, but eventually something else would happen that would set them off again or send them spiraling. I’d ask them to not invite someone over on Saturdays and expect me to leave the apartment because Saturday is the day I watch my e-sports. They’d ask me to go smoke out on the fire escape and I would say “no, I don’t want to right now” or “naw, I just smoked.” These things would lead to them spiraling.

They had the tendency to fester in these emotions until they exploded and then, when a week would go by without incident, a week of me being hypervigilant and trying really hard not to rattle any bars, they would assume everything was okay. Like, not with us or the house, but with them. That whatever issue they had that made them feel such rage was just gone and would never come up again. They stopped seeking help. They stopped trying to work on it. They didn’t start bringing up issues when they arose and they continued to choke it all down.

From this point on, I was always waiting and ready for the next explosion. I didn’t want to leave the lease for several reasons, but I also didn’t want to be there. I was hanging out with Moon, and our DnD friends, and spending less and less time with Ash. Otto came to visit and after being in the apartment with me for 10 minutes, he wanted to leave because it felt so uncomfortable. I apologized.

That night, Ash got me out on the balcony and lamented about how things went with Otto. I told them they could be a decent person and apologize, but they would never. They lamented the same things about Moon and I said, “listen, I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s not my job to fix your relationships.” But they wanted me to. They wanted me to “put in a good word” and help patch things up. I refused. That would not be the end of the conversation, though. It was around here when Otto really filled me in on all the ugly details and I would realize that Ash’s behavior had a pattern and it always revolved around rejection of their unwanted and uncalled-for sexual advances. I was a part of that by not seeing it earlier and for moving in with them. I’m sorry Otto.

I mentioned earlier that I had met Thom and Michelle at the renaissance fair, but I didn’t really get to know them until later when Ash and I went over to their house to watch a movie. The next day or so, I texted Michelle and asked if she would want to help me with my makeup. I was still very early in my transition. I had never used any makeup products before. Michelle’s style was superb and she was super easy to talk to. So, when she said yes, I was very happy.

I still remember that day. Moon came along. We all got high and walked around Sephora and Lux. Michelle was so high she was just walking around, picking things up, handing them to me without a word, and then later taking those things back and putting them in entirely wrong sections. We were having a blast. Thom was doing their best to help, but none of us were capable in that moment.

Afterward, Michelle did my makeup at her and Thom’s place. Moon told me I looked really soft. I felt very pretty. I felt very girly. I felt, for the first time in my life, like I was being treated as one of the girls. It reminded me of laying on the trampoline with some girls in high school and them talking about doing my nails. They never did it, but I had felt so seen in that moment.

When I went home, I could tell Ash was upset. Like they knew where I was and they didn’t like it. I felt like I was being watched by a toxic partner, but Ash was never my partner. Like I was being tracked and everything I did that wasn’t “sit inside and watch TV” was bad, hurtful, and purposefully done to piss Ash off. I wiped the makeup off in the bathroom and sat in my room the rest of the night.

I would spend a lot of time with Thom and Michelle during the rest of my time in Columbus. We all became really close. Trips to Ikea, going to all the hidden-gem restaurants, walks in the park, shopping trips, Half Price Books dives. We all held hands on Michelle’s birthday when we went to make candles. We’d get high and sit on the couch together while watching Bluey. I love them both so dearly. I would gust to my boyfriend about them. I would hope they were going to adopt me. We would talk about getting me a dog bed. I cry when I think about them now, as I live in Chicago. I miss them so much. I told Michelle, soon before I moved, that I would be happy living in Columbus if only to be her friend. And I meant it.

Early on, when I was just starting to hang with Thom and Michelle, Ash came along for a night. Ash was friends with Thom in college. They had roomed together. Ash was how I was introduced to these people so it made sense they would come and hang too. We were going to make little sculptures and fire them in the oven. Ash did not have a good time. Ash hated it. Ash felt uncomfortable and so did all of us around them. Ash stopped wanting to hang with all of us after that. No reason given. Which was so strange to me, because Ash would always say how close they were with Thom, and how they lived together in college. I felt somehow responsible. I felt somehow as if I was the reason for Ash feeling uncomfortable. That I had done something to make everyone hate them.

I would find out later that the last time Ash and Thom had lived together was the last time they truly spent time together beyond occasional discord messages. And that they left that living situation not-on-speaking-terms because of Ash’s behavior. Thom had a lot of first-hand experience with the same things I was dealing with. This was a pattern of behavior. All of it.

When I learned this information, I felt both relieved, simply to know I wasn’t at fault, that I wasn’t making Ash act like this. But also deeply embarrassed. I felt tricked. I felt Ash had lied to me about their entire life in Columbus. They had lied about their friends (who were more like acquaintances at best and all had strange experiences with Ash), they had lied about how well or long they had known people. Moon told me they had hung out with Ash twice before that day we three spent together. One of those times was the kayaking trip and the other was at the renaissance fair where I met them. From Ash’s perspective, they were really close to Moon. The crush had been somewhat mutual. From Ash’s perspective, Thom and them were really good friends. There was never any mention of them not being on speaking terms or the things that happened while they lived together.

Michelle also admitted to never caring much for Ash. Mostly because of the second-hand stories from Thom. She had admitted to me that Ash put her on edge because, as an Asian woman, Ash said a lot of edgy things. And at a few points those things felt a little, or very, racist. After she pointed that out to me, I could hear it too. When I could hear Ash yelling at their video game from their bedroom, hearing the one-sided conversation through a headset. I remember texting Michelle being like, “omg, I’m so sorry, I never really noticed before.” But she was right. I’m sorry Michelle.

There came a point when Ash pulled me out to smoke on the fire escape (it always happened on the fire escape) and asked me what I was up to that night. Because I had dressed up a little. Did my makeup. I told them I had plans with Thom and Michelle.

“Ah,” they said, then made a motion towards me, as if they were handing me something. “Well, here you go.”

“Huh?”

“I’m passing you the torch,” they said. “They’re your friends now, I guess.”

I stood motionless.

“What?” I said.

“They’re your friends. Not mine.”

“Dude,” I said, unable to articulate anything my body was feeling. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

And I left. I felt so uncomfortable. Ash didn’t give me anything or anyone. I asked Michelle to do my makeup. I went on little coffee dates with Thom. I spent time with them. I made the effort. I did it. I was not gifted friends and I was so furious at them for suggesting that. Suggesting that I was somehow stealing their friends from them and they were done fighting for them. I was furious. I could hardly believe they said that to me.

When I talked to my friends in Columbus about this, the people who also knew Ash, they told me it seemed like Ash was jealous, because people liked me more than them. Because I was easier to be around. Michelle told me, when she first met me, she thought it was weird that I was hanging out with Ash, simply because I seemed well-adjusted.

I don’t know, a part of me really does want to go back in time to the me-who-moved-to –Columbus and slap the shit out of her. For so many things. For feeling there was something wrong with Ash, and for not acting. For making excuses. But also for not knowing more. For not questioning anything Ash told me. For taking everything they said at face value. For believing my friend wouldn’t lie to me to get me to move to another state with them. But, as I found out soon, we weren’t friends. We hadn’t been friends for a long time.

Things got worse between Ash and me after I had a social life in Columbus, but they got even worse when I started dating in Columbus. I met Maxine in April or May of 2024. I had her over once a week. We’d sit in the living room and watch something, get high, go to my room for anything we needed privacy for. I tried to introduce Ash and Maxine, but Ash was very strange about it. Wouldn’t say hi to Maxine. Wouldn’t look at Maxine. Would hide in their room as if quarantined from Maxine. I did not understand it. Once or twice, Ash had a date over and I was cordial. I don’t know how else to explain it, it just wasn’t weird. But when I had someone over, it was automatically weird. As if a force field was placed around whoever I was with and Ash could not breach it.

I remember in July 2024, I was packing to move to another apartment in Columbus. Maxine offered to help me, and I thought that was so sweet. So she came over and helped me wrap mugs and pack away kitchen stuff. It was a nice day. Afterward, Ash approached me and told me it was “weird” for her to be over while we were packing.

“She was helping me,” I said. “She offered.”

“Okay,” Ash said. “It’s just weird for her to be here.”

“She’s part of my life. I really like her. We have been dating for months. What are you talking about?”

The conversation didn’t go anywhere. Ash was right. Their feelings were always right. If they felt something, then it was true. And I was an idiot and harmful for suggesting otherwise.

The move. I need to talk about the move, but I don’t want to. Because it was my fault. My biggest mistake. So, listen, I talked to Ash in the summer of 2024, telling them that I wasn’t sure I wanted to live together anymore. I told them that I was uncomfortable with how they treated my friends, with how they treated me. That I didn’t want to feel like that in my own home anymore. They told me that they didn’t have anywhere else to go, and they were right. They didn’t. They had no friends in Columbus. They told me that they were sorry and never wanted to hurt me. They told me that they wanted to live together with me. I had went looking at apartments alone. I had found an apartment that was cheaper. I was going to move. They were begging me to not do this to them and to continue living together.

Thom and Michelle were not living together at this time. I was going to have Thom move in with me instead. It would be just use two. Ash wanted to live with both of us. Ash said they didn’t have anywhere to go. They hoped I would take them in. I told them I would think about it, but that I didn’t want to live with them and wanted to live with Thom instead. A week later and the thing with Thom fell through because they couldn’t get out of their lease in time and definitely couldn’t be paying two rents. I didn’t know anyone else who was currently looking for a place to live. Moon and I hadn’t discussed moving in together in a while. Feeling like I had no options and I didn’t want to have to leave Columbus, I agreed to letting Ash move with me. They told me that things would be better. I hoped they would at least be able to be a decent roommate if we could no longer be close like we used to.

So, in July of 2024, I moved to another apartment with a year-lease signed by both Ash and I. I know this was a mistake. I can make all the excuses I want but I could have left Columbus. I could have left the city. Like, I could have abandoned my friends and the women I was dating and moved back in with family in Illinois. I could have done that but I really didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to leave Moon, and Thom, and Michelle, and Maxine. I didn’t want this life I had built in spite of Ash’s interference and anger to disappear because of Ash. I didn’t want to give them that. I also felt guilty because Ash had nowhere to go. It felt like I was their only hope. That if I left, they would be abandoned. I felt guilty. I felt so guilty. I don’t know if they did that on purpose. I don’t know if they made me feel like that on purpose. I don’t know if they intentionally were ignorant of everything they did or if it was calculated. I don’t know. I can never know. And I don’t think it matters. I think the results are the same: we moved together.

My long-distance boyfriend came to visit in August after the move in July. There’s nothing special to note here. The conversation about him staying with us for a week was annoying. Ash obviously did not want it and was not able to say anything to my boyfriend the entire trip. My boyfriend told me they felt extremely uncomfortable with my roommate just pretending they weren’t there.

Also in August, I started dating Lane, Maxine’s girlfriend. Once a week I would have Lane over, or Maxine, sometimes it would be together and sometimes it would be separate. Sometimes I would go over to their place and spend the night. Ash took me out onto the balcony (no fire escape) and told me they didn’t feel comfortable having them over so much. And didn’t want anyone over two days in a row. Which confused me because I didn’t do that, and Ash had invited people over multiple days in a row in the past. It felt like a double standard being set on me and my partner, all of us trans women. But I told Ash I wouldn’t do that and I would respect their wishes.

But I fell in love with Lane. Like, full-on, passionate, romantic love. And I wanted to spend so much time with her. I remember sitting with Ash and saying, “Hey, I know I said I wouldn’t do this, but can I have Lane over again tonight? I really like this girl. I think I love her.” They were upset, but they let me do it. That’s how it felt, at least. They let me do it. They let me have friends over. It never felt like it was my choice. It never felt like I could have someone over. It felt like Ash had to let them come over. Because if not, they might freak out. They might spiral.

Towards the end of August, on a brutal day of summer, the three of us (Maxine, Lane, and I) went on a picnic. It was nearly 100 degrees. We hid in the shade of a tree and ate grapes. It was two o’clock and both of them had to work at three. We wanted to cool off, so we went back to my apartment and sat on the couch. We were there for five minutes before Ash came out.

“Hey, wanna step out and smoke?” They asked. I said sure and stepped outside. “Are you trying to get me to move out?” They were yelling as soon as the door shut. Their face was so angry.

“What?” I didn’t know what was happening.

“Are you trying to get me to move out? I told you to let me know if people were coming over, and you have these two over again. You’re doing this on purpose.”

I had trouble finding words.

“No,” I said. “I asked you to move here with me.”

“Then what is this?”

“It was hot outside, we wanted to cool off.”

We yelled at each other. Lane and Maxine were inside, separated from us by a thin wall. They heard us yelling. We yelled about a lot. I was furious. I couldn’t believe what they were saying to me or how they were saying it. I couldn’t believe that I was being yelled at and treated like a child because it was hot outside and I thought I could bring my friends over to be in the AC for a moment.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking of you,” I yelled. “I was driving. I couldn’t text you. It was hot and I just wanted to cool off. I’m sorry I didn’t think to text you. What was I supposed to do?”

“You could have texted on the walk from the car to the door.”

“What? I said I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wasn’t fucking thinking about you. I don’t understand why you’re so mad. I don’t understand why you don’t want them around. I don’t understand why you won’t talk to them. I don’t know why you explode like this. I don’t know why you don’t talk to me like a normal person. I think it’s weird that the person I thought was my friend doesn’t want to meet the important people in my life and isn’t happy that I made a life here.”

“I think it’s weird you want me to meet them.”

“My girlfriend?”

“Yeah. It’s weird. It’s weird that you had Maxine over while we were moving.”

“What? What am I doing that’s so wrong? It’s my apartment, too. I should be able to have people over. I should be able to come and go without having to check in with you. I don’t bother you. When we’re over we just go into my room and that’s my room. That’s my space. I shouldn’t need your permission to have someone in my room.”

“You’re inconsiderate.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You don’t care that i’m uncomfortable when there’s other people in my house.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t fucking care. I don’t fucking care because who I spend time with in my own room is none of your business. No one is keeping you in your room.”

“I just don’t like it.”

“I don’t care. You need to get over it. We share this apartment, and just because I have a social life doesn’t mean that I’m fucking harming you.”

“Sure.”

“They don’t even want to be here because you make them feel unwanted. You make them feel so uncomfortable. They worry that you hate them because they’re trans and I defend you. I say, ‘no, no, no, it’s not like that.’ I don’t want the people I love to be made to feel like that because of you. I don’t want you to do that to them anymore.”

“Sure.”

“I have tried to understand. I have talked to everyone I know, trying to find where it is I am messing up here, but no one has any answers for me. No one has answers for why you’re behaving like this. I don’t know why you are treating me like this. I don’t know what changed. Everything was fine when I didn’t know anyone and you were my only friend, but now?”

“I talk to people too,” they said. I know they meant the server I used to be part of. “They don’t understand why you’re like this either.”

“Great,” I said.

“It’s not like that,” they said. “I’m not jealous. You’re just inconsiderate and don’t care that I don’t like other people around.”

“But it’s okay when you have friends over?”

“It’s not like that,” they repeated.

“Then what is it?”

They didn’t have an answer. They just kept saying they didn’t like people in their house. They kept saying it over and over and over and over again and then they would keep inviting their friend, their one and only friend, over to the apartment and I would be at a loss for words. It was simply that I was inviting people over. If they invited people over, everything was fine. But me doing it? Me having friends? Me dating? It was somehow their problem, and that problem was too much for them to handle.

The conversation ended when they cooled off and they started dumping on me about their childhood. Dumping on me about their ex from college. Just dumping all of this baggage on me. As an excuse. As an explanation. I don’t know. I didn’t want to hear it but I listened. I didn’t know what else to do. They were sad again. They were apologizing a lot. “I just get paranoid,” they said.

Maxine and Lane came out and said they had to leave. I felt so embarrassed. They heard all of it. I had only known Lane for a month at that point and already she heard me get into a screaming match. I hugged them both and spent the rest of the night trying to talk them through it, assure them that everything was okay, and to make sure they were okay after being forced to listen to that.

That night, Ash pulled me out to smoke again.

“I’d like to meet Lane,” they said.

“I do not want to talk to you about this right now,” I said. It had been two hours and they were already acting like the day didn’t happen. They were already acting like their held aggression was better. Cured. That our relationship was fine and that this wasn’t just a continuation of a pattern of behavior that I was feeling suffocated by. What I couldn’t say to them was that, during the argument, when they told me it was weird of me to want them to meet the people I was dating, people I wanted in my life, I realized we weren’t friends. I realized we were only roommates. And I realized that Ash was the worst roommate I had ever had. That they made me feel watched, judged, annoying, scared, anxious, but also relied upon. During our entire time living together, Ash would ask me for work. To work on one of my projects or to do something together. And that was okay at first, because that was our working relationship. It was what our friendship was founded on. But after the personal stuff started happening, after Otto and Moon and Thom and Michelle and Maxine and Lane, I didn’t want to work with them anymore. I couldn’t be responsible for paying my rent and their rent. I couldn’t be responsible for them having work. Our working relationship ended somewhere in there. I’ll never work with them again. I will spend the rest of my career making up for the fact that I worked with a monster.

Moon told me that they met Ash on a Columbus discord server and that Ash had commissioned them to do a piece of art for a project. Moon told me that Ash used that as an excuse to flirt with them and that after Moon’s refusal, the working relationship was over too. Ash invited Otto to the private discord server under the guise of wanting to work together. Ash kicked Otto from the server when Otto didn’t want to sleep with them. Otto told me second-hand that someone else in the industry was also approached, flirted with, and treated weird by Ash.

Ash’s behavior online was that of a bully. And as soon as Ash was pushed back by someone online, they ran away, deleted accounts, disappeared. Ash was skillful at the work they did, and I played a part in excusing toxic behavior. Ash was an okay collaborator to me, but I think it’s because they didn’t want to fuck me. Ash was not an okay collaborator to Moon or Otto and crossed boundaries. I don’t know if there are other people they worked with or how they were treated.

I stopped living with Ash in April 2025. Our lease is up in July. I am paying a little more than half-rent to them. The remainder of 2024 and beginning of 2025 was not good between us. After the huge argument, Ash felt better and things went back to normal for them, but I remained constantly stressed that they were going to blow up again. I kept expecting it. I stopped going outside with them to smoke. I stopped hanging out with them at all. I didn’t want to see them. I left the house whenever I could. I got an automatic feed and fountains for my cat so I wouldn’t feel as bad not being around but I still felt horrible. I still couldn’t have people over and when I would, it would be extremely uncomfortable. Nothing changed. I just became more and more vigilant. Watching for signs. Looking for warnings. I did the majority of the chores because one time after I had Maxine over and I cooked for her, Ash made a big deal about the dirty dishes. Asked me to do them, which they had never done before. It was new behavior. I didn’t know whether to read into it or not. Were they mad? I don’t know, better safe than sorry. So I did the dishes every other day or so. I swept the kitchen. Cleaned the counters. Beat and vacuumed the rugs. Swept the living room and hallway. Cleaned the bathroom. Whenever I was home, I was doing chores. Ash stayed in their room the entire time, only coming out to smoke or get something from the kitchen. I felt like my presence was keeping them locked away. I didn’t understand. If I was there, I was hurting them and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

I was getting over a cold one week after being sick over at Lane’s place. She and Maxine had taken care of me through the worst of it. I was mostly over the cold, laying on the couch at my apartment, watching something on my laptop while talking to my boyfriend. It was almost 8 at night. Ash comes out of their room and tells me to keep it down, they’re trying to sleep. I apologize. The only noise is me talking and, sure, I can sometimes laugh a little loud, but the TV was off. The heater was louder than me. I look at the clock and it’s not even 8 yet. I go knock on Ash’s door and ask what’s up, cause it’s not even 8 and I’m not making a lot of noise.

“You’re always out here,” they say. “You got me sick so I’m in here trying to lay down and you’re out here talking to your boyfriend, e-dating your boyfriend, and it’s fucking weird.”

“What? I’m just talking to him.”

“Yeah, it’s fucking weird.” I’ll never forget the look on Ash’s face. Pure hatred. They hated me so much in that moment, and maybe in all moments. They told me they complained about me to all their online friends. I don’t know what was said about me. But it was probably the unsanitized version of what was yelled in my face. The unsanitized version of eyes that wanted me to never show my face again.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I said. “Something has to change. One of us needs to leave. I can’t do this.”

“I agree,” they said. They shut their door. I went into my room and cried. I stayed in my room the next day. And the day after that. I felt like stepping out of my room would give them reason to be mad again. That I had to be quiet. That I had to be still. That I couldn’t do anything that would be noisy or would make me go into the living room. It was my couch and my television out there (like, literally, I had bought them), but the space was no longer mine. It was a zone where hatred was allowed. It was a place where, if I existed in it, everything I did was wrong.

“I meant what I said.” We were talking after a few days. “This can’t go on. I can’t live like this.”

“I think we should just wait it out. It’s just till July.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t live like this for months.”

I told them that I would be looking for a place to live. I told them it wasn’t fair for me to find this apartment, for me to agree to them living with me, and for me to have to leave. There were outside factors at play though. After the 2024 election, Ohio was firmly looking like a red state and was already putting anti-trans legislature in front of all of our eyes. Maxine and Lane had approached me, broadly, about moving out of state together. And months after that conversation, it was becoming a lot more obvious that we would need to.

The landlord let me know I couldn’t get out of the lease. Everyone close to me was telling me the same thing: to abandon Ash. To leave them to handle it all on their own. Or to kick them out. And I understood the impulse. But I told them that I didn’t think it was right to do that to anyone. I told them I didn’t think anyone deserved to be homeless, no matter how they have treated me. I still believe that. It’s why I’m paying half the rent for a place I don’t live in. But it’s also why I’ll never talk to Ash again.

The best I could do was text Ash that I was moving. That I had found a place, that I would still uphold my side of the rent. This was a month or so later. We didn’t speak a word to each other for weeks before that. I was hardly home and when I was I felt like an intruder. The only time I heard Ash speak was when they were playing video games late into the night, yelling at whoever it was that pissed them off at the moment.

The last conversation we had was about dishes. It happened when I was packing up the kitchen. I realized that Ash had gone through the living room, closets, and kitchen, removing everything that was there’s. I choose to see that as them making it easier for me to pack. So when I start wrapping up my plates and bowls in paper, Ash comes up to me.

“Those are my bowls,” they say.

“What? No they aren’t.”
“Yes. They are.”

“I’ve had these since I lived in Chicago.”

“Sure. I’ve had them since before I moved.”

“Whatever,” I said. We were already getting heated. Every conversation started with an accusation. Ash thought I was stealing their bowls. Angrily approached me. I told them to forget about it and I unpacked the bowls. I didn’t care. And, actually, I thought, maybe they were right. Maybe my bowls were packed away with the rest of the kitchen-stuff that I didn’t bring with me. I convinced myself that I had been mistaken. Those bowls and plates were Ash’s. Not mine. I left them in the kitchen cabinet and felt shitty about the whole thing.

During the move, I had grabbed my extra kitchen-stuff boxes from storage, and unpacked them with Lane in our new kitchen. Trying to get everything sorted. This was just a few weeks ago as I write this. I had assured Lane that we would have bowls and plates. They were worried that Ash was trying to manipulate me at the time. That if I let them get away with taking the bowls and plates that they would never stop asking more and more from me. I did my best to assure them this wasn’t true. That Ash was right, those plates were theirs, and I have more stuff in storage. We had almost gotten in an argument about it. “I have more bowls and plates, I promise.”

As the boxes were empties, broken down, put into the garbage, everything was organized and put in its right place, I had to drive to Walmart to buy some stuff: Groceries, a new TV because mine got ruined in the move, and a boxed set of plates and bowls, because we had none.