Someone's Favorite Person

An object in motion stays in motion, while an object at rest becomes invisible.

Sometime in the middle of the night, between waking up from an intense dream and finishing a well-written, but stressful book about an anxiety-ridden character who makes terrible choices, I read a really startling post online. It was written by someone whose name I can’t remember (because it was the middle of the night) who said something like “I know I’m nobody’s favorite person, but I’m okay with that.”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that post. And I’m genuinely not okay with it.

Maybe it hit extra hard because the main character in I Hope This Finds You Well, by Natalie Sue has withdrawn so completely from her own life that the job she dislikes is all she has. Or maybe it’s because a friendless supporting character in that story believes being a mother is the only thing she’s worth.

The idea of being nobody’s favorite person seems so utterly hopeless and lonely that it hurts my heart to imagine. I’ve never actually given any thought to whether I’m someone’s favorite person, to be honest. Perhaps it’s arrogance or confidence or willful ignorance, but it’s just not something I’ve striven to be. I have so many favorite people in my life that it has never occurred to me to wonder about my status with them, and if I really examine the idea of being someone’s favorite person, the one at the center, whose favor overrides all others, that person would be me.

When I’m signing my books, occasionally I’ll write “Live Out Loud,” or “This isn’t a dress rehearsal,” or “Be the heroine of your own story.” The words might sound trite, but it doesn’t make them any less true in my reality. We are all the heroes of our own stories, and if we’re not the centers of our own universes, who are we?

I think about how women over 50 become less and less visible in media, in the workplace, and in a world that values youth and beauty more than age and experience, and I can see how a woman like the characters in I Hope This Finds You Well could see herself diminishing in the eyes of others to the point that she begins to lose herself. And as my kids grow and leave and become adults with lives that don’t require my help, I look around at the things I’ve immersed myself in – volunteering for things I’m passionate about, organizing events and creating fundraisers because things need to get done and I have the skills to do them. I remain at the center of my own life, contributing to things that matter to me. I don’t wonder if I matter - I just do what I do, and that matters.

I’ve had lots of moments of stillness in my life, the kind of stillness that spends all day in bed reading rather than getting up to do things. I’ve chosen solitude for days at a time, and I know the loneliness of not speaking to another human being until my voice feels broken. But I also know that depression – because truly, that kind of stillness is absolutely depression – is self-generating until the only way out is up. Up out of bed into motion, until doing things generates more things to do. An object in motion stays in motion, while an object at rest eventually becomes invisible.

I refuse to be invisible, and maybe that’s another reason why being at the center of my own universe is enough. If I don’t see myself, who can? If I don’t know myself, who will? And if I don’t love myself, how can anyone else love me?

If I’d been more conscious last night when I read the post from the person who was okay with not being someone’s favorite person, I would have written something like this. “Be your own favorite person. Be the heroine of your own story, because this isn’t a dress rehearsal, and the only way to truly live the story of your life is to live out loud.”