I have always disliked the phrase "cross multiply"! I would think of that as two operations, "multiply both sides by \(\displaystyle e^x\)" and "divide both sides by u".
alore, think of this as "undoing" what has been done to x. The equation here is \(\displaystyle -2e^{-x}= ???\). If you were given a value of x and asked to find ???, you would (1) multiply by -1 to get -x, (2) take the exponential to get \(\displaystyle e^{-x}\), then (3) multiply by -2 to get \(\displaystyle -2e^{-x}\).
To solve for x, do the opposite operations in the opposite order. The last thing you do in calculating \(\displaystyle -2e^{-x}\) is multiply by -2 so to solve for x, the first thing you should do is divide by -2. Of course you have to do the same thing to both sides to keep the equation true. Dividing both sides by -2 gives \(\displaystyle \frac{-2e^{-x}}{-2}= e^{-x}= \frac{???}{-2}\).
The opposite of the exponential is the logarithm. Taking the natural log of both sides is \(\displaystyle ln(e^{-x})= -x= ln(??/-2)\). Finally the opposite of multiplying by -1 is the same as dividing by -1 (which happens to be the same as multiplying by -1): \(\displaystyle \frac{-x}{-1}= x= \frac{ln(??/-2)}{-1}= -ln(??/-1)\).