Republish: To the Spaniard (people to try and forget)
Part four in a series of writings where I reminisce on past loves and encounters.
It felt like a whirlwind.
And it ended in flames.
Ma* had marked me in ways I didn’t yet understand. After them, I kept falling for echoes—people who carried their essence in fleeting gestures, familiar glances.
And so, the Spaniard entered my life.
She said she was 5’7. Our first date was in Central Park. She waited on a bench, calm and patient, as if she already knew how the story would unfold. We walked and talked for hours, the crisp autumn air swirling between us. I had double-booked myself that evening, a friend waiting for me later, but it didn’t feel like a mistake. She was a Capricorn—like Ma—though a January one. Observant. A pianist, a musician on a Fulbright, the perfect storm of past loves: Ma, Sophie, E.E.
Narcissism does not always arrive grandiose, nor does it wear a warning sign. It slips in softly, masked in warmth, until it tightens like a snare.
Early on, she mentioned a show she was playing in Queens. I wanted to see her in her element. She let me follow her on Instagram, and I told her I’d come. She played beautifully. I watched, spellbound. I had a drink. I met her older friends, Gem, a successful tech entrepeneur and her husband, Tor.
I felt myself falling.
On the subway home, we kissed between bursts of conversation, promising to see each other again soon. More dates followed—a stroll through the botanical gardens, nights wrapped in tangled dialogue, mornings that felt lighter than they should have. I was enamored with her story: an immigrant, navigating a world that neither fully embraced nor rejected her. She spoke several languages, each one rolling off her tongue like a secret. She was fascinating. And, at the time, I found her beautiful.
It felt like I had won the lottery.
Little did I know, I had fallen in love with a mirrored image of myself.
She loved Cubbyhole, drawn to the bartender Bee, who slipped her free drinks and too-long glances. My ex thought she was hot. I, for my own reasons, did not. Still, I played along, tried to be friendly.
I wasn’t imagining it—the way Bee’s gaze slid over me, dismissive, predatory in its own way. If we sat at the bar, she’d talk only to my ex, throwing me scraps of conversation laced with condescension. If the place was crowded, she’d always find her way close, a casual “Hi” that lingered in the air too long. She had a crush. And it irked me.
My ex denied it, swore she didn’t see it.
One night, my irritation boiled over.
“Maybe if she wasn’t so desperate and embarrassing, she’d have a girlfriend.”
I struck a nerve. That night, my ex kept her distance. Not long after, Bee was dumped by her own girlfriend. Like me, her ex had no patience for someone so starved for validation they clung to it at their job.
But I digress.
By January, for her birthday, we ventured to The Woods bar.
It was a disaster.
Her ‘friend’ arrived, bringing her roommate. The friend was a twenty-year-old architecture student, lost in the wreckage of her family’s rejection. Arianna. A name that would burn into my brain. She’d been seeing my ex girlfriend for months; starting early in the Fall and ending a week before my ex’s birthday. The roommate of Arianna—a walking thirst trap with a TikTok following and little else. I nudged my ex to introduce me, hoping to stitch myself into her world. The reception was frigid. Her “friend” flirted—openly, deliberately. Right in front of me.
We ended the night in a fight. She was drunk, looping through the same arguments, her words spinning into incoherence. I begged her to see how deeply disrespectful she had been. She refused.
She begged me to forgive her when I initiated not speaking to her for three days. She swore that she’d made several horrible mistakes. That she wouldn’t do such a thing again. I granted her an ultimatum.
Dump the friend, and never do it again. After a week, she complied and apologized.
Time blurred after that. Her friend Flo visited. I met her ‘supposedly’ homophobic parents, who, to my surprise, welcomed me in. For a moment, it felt like family. A cruel illusion.
Because as our relationship progressed, so did the distance between us.
The hardest part of healing is accepting that none of it was real.
What kind of person who loves you triangulates you with others? Gaslights you into questioning your own reality? Makes you doubt every gut feeling you have?
We never truly recovered from the Arianna incident.
I began spiraling often. Why had her Instagram following gone up? Why wasn’t she texting me back? Did she even like me anymore?
That wasn’t who I was before.
March and April started to become rocky again. I often opted to stay home while she ventured out with friends. And while texting me that she was too tired to go out one night, I had a funny suspicion that that was a lie. And so I checked her friend’s stories. While she had told me she stayed in, she had gone to The Woods, partied with her ‘friends.’ A lie again.
She’ll never stop cheating, I thought to myself.
I slowly began to disconnect from her. And she felt it. And then, in May, she discarded me—casually, like small talk about the weather. It was brief, for a day, before she backtracked. We were back together again after what was a less than twelve hour break up. I attended her graduation at the Manhattan School of Music, and when inquiring if she’d consider long distance, she said she didn’t know.
We broke up again in June.
This time, I made it final. But the aftermath was brutal.
For a month, I could barely move. Bathing felt impossible. Work drained me beyond comprehension. I had re-downloaded dating apps before the discard, setting up a bare-bones profile. But by June, as I forced myself back into the world, I paused them. What if I saw her? What if she saw me?
She reached out later to ‘check in,’ claiming she was considering therapy and wanted feedback on how she had been in our relationship. I poured myself into a response—an autopsy of our time together.
I asked for my things back. She refused.
Then, another text.
She had been in bed for three months, she claimed. Depressed. Said she’d reach out when she was ready.
But from my experiences with her, I knew that, too, was a lie.
And then, I sent my final message. I’m blocking you on everything. I wish you the best, happiness, and healing.
A TikTok found me that August—a runner, once celibate, now not. And the reason? My ex. They broke up not even a month later. My ex harassing her until she erased every trace of their time together.
I felt nothing but disgust.
I won’t pretend I’m fully healed. Though it’s frowned upon to move from one relationship to another, I have found myself in that position. But I am changed.
Healing from narcissistic abuse is already excruciating—but when you’re part of a marginalized community, the wounds cut deeper. The questions come sharper. Why did this happen? Why did it have to happen to me?
Months later, I was driving home when I saw her.
She crossed the street alone, slouched, carrying a Domino’s pizza box. A silhouette of something I used to know.
God… she looks so pathetic…
I laughed to myself and kept driving.
Good riddance.