A Borderline’s “FP”

27 December, 2015 by YHN 2 Comments

FP = “Favorite Person”

I recently learned about this term when I started browsing Tumblr again (“The horror! The horror!”) While tumbling through the various tags looking for some camaraderie, I kept seeing this acronym. Fp. Fp. Fp. What the shit is an Fp? Fart pancake? Flabby pancreas? Flirty parakeet?

And then: Ooooh!! Favorite Person. I have one of those. … I have a ton of those… 

So what is the mysterious Favorite Person? This person is Everything. They inadvertently determine your happiness that day. If you happen to see your FP, all is right in the world, and the clouds have started burping butterflies. When your FP goes unseen or somehow fails to grace your life in some way, DOOM. Might as well go drink from the poop-colored canal. Nothing worse can possibly happen now. Allow me to excerpt some tumblr posts to demonstrate:

fp: interacts with someone else
me: “why are you deliberately ignoring me? why are you hurting me this way? what did i do to make you hate me?”

——-

favourite person: *texts me first*

me: *wild heart palpitations, curls up into a ball, can’t stop smiling*

——

when ur fp doesn’t respond within 2.2 seconds
Brain: They HATE you!! They want you to die!!! They NEVER want to see you again!!! They’re SO FREAKING MAD at you!!!

——

me: *doesn’t really like rum*

fp: “I love mojitos. They are my favorite drink!”

me: *starts forcing down mojitos until I damn well like them*

And that is a half-battered and dog-eaten Spark Notes version of all of the feels and hates and loves and despairs and joys that come along with your FP.

Oh, but here’s the fun fact: it’s possible to have more than one FP at the same time. And it’s possible never to forget your past FPs. So let’s count mine, shall we? (R, K, P, L, G, J, E, C, C, A, J, L, H, K, P…)  At least 15. That’s fifteen people running around in my head, popping up in dreams, dictating my holidays, my daily schedule, and otherwise being emotional cocaine.

They’re kind to me: I’M SO FREAKING HAPPY! They are unresponsive: LIFE IS NOT EVEN WORTH IT. My mood swings wildly around them just as it does around my work, my training, my body image, my capabilities… just a pendulum knocking everything over. Most nights there’s a lovely mess for me either to pick up and clear away or to find a little me-shaped hole in there to crawl into and try to sleep.

It’s exhausting. I end up looking like this by the end of the day:

(I wish I knew where I’d found this so I could offer credit.)

So, that’s fun. And apparently I’m one of the “high functioning” ones.

---

I’m aware that I probably just scared every non-BPD person out of their pants. “Am I someone’s FP? Oh God, don’t let me be an FP. That’s too much pressure! I can’t handle that level of attention and clinginess and mimicry and oh dear sweet Jesus just put all the BPDs somewhere else…”

Calm down. Not everyone knows they are an FP nor will ever realize it. I think only one person has ever known that they were an FP of mine and not in so many words. I hide it very well.

Just become someone takes a piece of my soul doesn’t mean that I should take theirs.

(Am I “high functioning” because I just sit here and let things beat me over the face, running the Gauntlet every day without alerting the people around me that the things they say and do are cudgels to my kidneys?)

This is not to say that I have not spent hours agonizing over emails and texts that haven’t received responses, sat dutifully in my office waiting for an FP to pass by on their way home so I could say hello, dreamed of them, wondered how to do something nice for them… fucking hours of my life gone because I carry too many people in my heart. It’s too damn full of people, and there’s little room left for me.

That’s why silent retreats end up being so important for my health– only during those days do I start to remember that I am a person, too.

For the Love of Metta,

YHN

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