A spoken word piece by JT Santana
They never taught me this math in school.
Never handed me a chalkboard
and said,
“Here’s how you calculate your worth
when the world keeps subtracting parts of you.”
I learned on the back of napkins,
in the corners of bathroom stalls,
counting backward from shame
just to make it to the next hour.
Long division of dignity.
Fractions of my identity
left scattered on application forms
and intake assessments
that asked if I had ever been institutionalized—
but never asked
if I had ever been held
like a human being.
I carried numbers like scars.
Body mass index.
Blood alcohol content.
Credit score.
Case number.
One-digit mistakes that multiplied into systems
designed to say
you do not belong here.
And still—
I kept showing up.
Somewhere along the way,
I became the equation
no one wanted to solve.
Too queer, too loud, too disabled, too emotional.
Too complicated
for easy math.
People like me
are always the variable they try to isolate.
Like: “If we remove that one,
the system works just fine.”
Like: “If they would just stop making noise,
we could get back to pretending this place is safe.”
But I am not imaginary.
I am not a miscalculation.
I am not the error message
you tape over with a prettier face
and a more palatable narrative.
Let me show you how I count now.
One breath
is a revolution.
Two steps forward
is a protest.
Three days without disappearing
is a goddamn miracle.
I measure my worth
not by what I produce,
but by what I endure
without losing the softness in my voice.
I am fluent in subtraction.
I know how to survive
after being cut out,
cut off,
cut down.
But I am also learning addition.
How to add myself
back into rooms that erased me.
How to add grace
to mornings where I wake up
already tired.
How to add my voice
to a chorus of others
who refuse to be silent
just to make stigma more comfortable.
They say stigma sticks.
They say it follows you—
like shadow,
like stench,
like skin you cannot shed.
But stigma is not cement.
It is rumor,
and rumors lose power
when they are met with truth.
So here is mine:
I have lived
through systems that said
I should not.
I have loved
in bodies they said were unlovable.
I have stood
when everything inside me said crawl.
And I have named myself whole
in a world that still tries to break me
into smaller pieces.
This is the math of belonging:
Not a perfect sum.
Not a neat equation.
But a scribbled, sweaty, sacred proof
that I am still here.
I belong
not because you decided I could.
I belong
because I exist.
Because I breathe.
Because I wake up
and dare to name the day
mine.
I belong
because someone else
who thought they were alone
might hear these words
and realize they are not.
And that?
That is the only math I need.
