How to Have a Favorite Person

When I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I scoured the internet for answers. I looked through every forum, every social media, and every support group for answers. Why am I like this? Was I always like this? Did my trauma cause this? I certainly got a few answers, but one that surprised me was to a question that I didn’t even ask. This was the discovery of the “favorite person”, the awareness of which made everything about my past relationships fall perfectly into place.

Now, I’m not here to explain exactly what a ‘favorite person’ is. I’m not here to write down every detail. It’s easier if I just tell you that, simply put, my favorite person is my reason for existence. They’re the reason I wake up in the morning, the reason I breathe, and the reason I do anything in my life. I am undeniably obsessed with this person, and I build my entire life and shape my entire world view around this person. (Thankfully, my current favorite person, and the one who I see being my favorite person for the rest of my life, has just about the same world views as I already did.) My relationship with my favorite person has always been immersed by intense feelings and obsession. I’m sure other people could have a different experience, but for the sake of this article, that’s how I will define my favorite person, or my ‘FP’, because in the end this article is about me, and my experiences with having a FP.

If I remember correctly, I believe I had my first FP when I was in elementary school. Now, I’m not saying that I had BPD as a child. Psychiatrists are reluctant to diagnose BPD in early adolescents, let alone children, and in order to get a diagnosis the traits have to be consistently present for at least a year, according to my former psychiatrist. I don’t think I had BPD as a kid. However, I do recognize that at least one of my traits that led to my diagnosis of BPD did appear during my childhood, the “unstable relationships” trait in particular. This is the trait that leads to the development of the favorite person.

My first FP I can think of was a girl named Jewel*, my best friend. I was obsessed with her. I wanted to be around her constantly, and when we had to write an essay about the person who meant the most to us, I wrote about her without question. Then I found out she wrote about her grandmother, not me. That tore me apart. So, I dropped her.

When you have a favorite person, things need to be mutual, or you’re in for a world of pain. Back then was when I first got that hint, but never really learned that lesson until I was twenty. More on that later.

My second favorite person was a boy I had a crush on. Wyatt.* I had a crush on him for seven years. During those seven years, my FP did bounce around, but it usually came back to him. For clarification, we never dated, kissed, or anything. I was so scared of being hurt again like how Jewel hurt me, so I never made the mood to tell Wyatt how I felt. That was probably for the best; I didn’t need anyone who wouldn’t understand my obsession with them to know about it. Instead I would stalk his social media, spend all the time I could around him without saying a word, and feel oh, so euphoric when he laughed at my jokes or agreed with something I said. I distinctly remember going through the school directory and learning his address. I never went to his house or anything, but wouldn’t be able to help but look if I happened to drive by it on the way to school sometimes to see if he was out in the yard by any chance –– during all those seven years, he lived in the area of town where all the schools were, so this was a more frequent occurrence than I care to admit over that period of time. I was so obsessed, until I found a new favorite person. I didn’t want a new favorite person, as I really liked the arrangement we had where we never overstepped boundaries, hurt each other’s feelings, and just remained friends for seven years. That was the first real lesson I got on having a FP, though: it’s not a choice.

The next few favorite people were largely uneventful. Most of them I dated, or was best friends with, and many of them turned me into people I wasn’t so that I could fit better with them, but none of them really lasted or had any lasting impact on me. Not until I met Mateo*.

I was twenty years old, and I met the most wonderful guy. He was almost immediately my FP after the first date, which was the perfect date. And at this point, I had my diagnosis and knew what an FP was, so I knew exactly what was going on and exactly how I felt about him.

Unfortunately, after a few more dates, I ended up going to the hospital for other reasons, and staying there for about a week. I would call him every day, and he would answer and talk to me. I was ecstatic. At least, until one day, when I overheard someone ask him who he was talking to. He responded, “oh, Sigi, you know, (his roommate’s name)’s friend.” My heart sank into my chest. I decided not to say anything about it, and figure out what to say, but mulling over it only made me more upset in the long run. I was obsessed with this guy. I knew everything about him. I spent every second of every single day thinking about him. And what was I to him? His roommate’s friend. I tried to brush it aside, but I couldn’t.

At some point, during the hospital stay, he told me about a show his band was playing at some house party, and said he wanted me to go. I did everything I could to make sure I got out of the hospital earlier, even though I was still sick, because I thought it would mean a lot to him. So I get out of the hospital, put on my best outfit, buy new lipstick and new false eyelashes to make sure my makeup looked perfect, and went to the party, expecting him to be excited to see me. He greeted me, and then immediately went back to talking to his friends. So, there I was, at a party where I was sick, anxious, scared, and the only person I knew there was ignoring me to talk to other people. Every time I tried initiating conversation with him, he would bring his attention elsewhere. I was starting to get angry. At this point, I confront him;

“Why did you refer to me as your roommate’s friend on the phone the other day?”

“Because that’s what those people know you as.”

“They don’t know me as anything else?” I responded, my voice cracking.

“No, why would they?”

I grit my teeth, and took a breath. “Mateo. We’re dating.”

“We’re not dating, we’ve just been on dates.”

At this point, my eyes were starting to water. Any negative emotion I could have possibly felt, I was feeling in that moment. And, of course, to make ‘the worst’ worse, before I could say what I wanted to say, along the lines of ‘us being on dates means we’re dating, we just aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend yet, what is so hard to understand about that? I like you,’ he noticed someone else in the room and went to talk to them instead. I’m not sure how I kept my composure after that. I went to the corner, trying to calm down, and waited a few minutes to get my chance to talk to him again. I got to the point, though, where I was so socially uncomfortable, and so afraid to be so vulnerable around all these people, I approach him again. This time he’s talking to a group of two girls.

I walk up to his side, and say, “Mateo,” in the weakest voice possible.

“What?” he asks, obviously annoyed.

Metaphorical tail between my legs, I say, “I’m really uncomfortable. I don’t know how to talk to anyone here.”

“Just talk to someone.”

One of the girls he’s talking to makes a joke about how he’s obviously not interested in talking to me, something along the lines of, ‘wow, talk about unrequited,’ and it took all of me not to look her in the eyes and spew venom. I was too sad to be angry, though. My delusions of my FP feeling the same way about me were quickly falling apart. In one last effort, though, I look down, and lean my head against his shoulder, in some sort of desperate cry for some sense of comfort in this situation.

“What the fuck?!” He steps away from me.

I look up at him, tears in my eyes at this point.

Before I can apologize, he says to me, in the most irritated of tones, “can you give me some space?”

This was it.

I left the house party stomping home in my heeled combat boots, freezing in my skinny jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket combination that could have never been enough for the harsh northern winter, but it didn’t matter. I was completely numb, physically. All I felt was anger.

I pulled myself from near death, forced myself out of the treatment I needed, bought new makeup, which we all know is quite the feat for a jobless kid living in the city like 20 year old me was, and took a twenty minute trip on the potential worst transportation system in the world, all for someone who wouldn’t even refer to me as someone he was dating? Who wouldn’t even talk to me at a party? Introduce me to his friends? Give me any sense of comfort when I was obviously sick and overwhelmed by anxiety? I didn’t even bother taking transportation home. I was so full of rage that I stormed home the entire way and felt nothing but hatred. I laid in bed screaming into my pillow, crying, feeling every horrible way I’ve ever felt in my life in the span of however long it took for me to finally emotionally exhaust myself and pass out. (Which, honestly, probably wasn’t very long.)

I never talked to him again after that night.

When I woke up to my mascara stained face, similarly clumped up eyelashes, my makeup and tear covered pillow, in my favorite outfit that now carried a horrible memory on my shoulders, and my aching feet from going all that way in heels, I had learned a valuable lesson. My relationship with my favorite person, no matter who they were to me, needed to be mutual.

I carried that with me in the people I dated since then. However, these relationships were also rather uneventful. The first was someone who I had an instant connection with, and he very quickly told me he loved me. So I dove right in. I thought, if anyone, this might finally be the person who can reciprocate my feelings. He wasn’t. I ended up dumping him for the second one. The second was seemingly perfect; he was clingy as I was, needed my constant attention like I needed his, and I genuinely thought that I was his favorite person too. Until he started spending too much time with his friends, and not with me, and didn’t invite me to join even once. He had stated before that as long as he loved me, he wanted nobody else’s attention, so I knew something was up. As it turned out, he didn’t have feelings for me anymore. Things ended. Then, I got back into a relationship with the first, because he told me I was his favorite person. Everything got confusing after that, and, honestly, I’ll probably write about it some other time, but this isn’t about my relationship drama. This is about my experience with having a favorite person.

I took a break from having a favorite person. In a way, I became my own favorite person. I was working on myself, and coming to the realization of exactly what I want and exactly what I needed out of life. Again, this isn’t about any of that, this is about my experience with having a favorite person.

Thankfully, my looking inward on myself has finally led to me meeting someone new. He became my favorite person within a manner of hours after we began talking to one another. He’s exactly like me in all the right ways, so, as narcissistic as this may sound, how could he not become my favorite person? As soon as I knew what he was, I explained to him what a favorite person was. That it was a trait of having BPD, and I then told him every little detail about having an FP. His reaction could not have been more perfect, as he immediately responds, “wait, do I have BPD then?” That really showed me that he understood what it was like to have an FP, and that’s all I ever wanted. For my FP to understand the most intense part of my life and the thing that forms my relationships and, on a wider scale, my entire universe. The next morning, he tells me that I’m his favorite person. I try to play it cool, but very quickly, I not-so-nonchalantly confess that he is mine, too.

Clearly, my experiences with having a favorite person have been rather tumultuous, and have caused me a lot of pain. Despite that, I’m very glad for every event in my life leading up to where it is now, for more than one reason. There’s no telling where the future will lie, and where things will go from here, but there’s one thing for certain; I’m my favorite person’s favorite person, and there is nothing better than that in the world.

*Names changed for privacy reasons.