I am a number. My essence is tied to mortgage payments and electricity bills so I make a number every number of hours to pay for a number based on the percentage of my number.

I am a respiring GPA with a fluctuating sticker price tacked to it; my highschool career will heed nothing more than how much debt I’ll be accruing for college. I go to a school that explicitly implies that self-expression and individuality are beautiful things-I am graded on my ability to comprehend that self-expression and individuality are beautiful things. I will never be valued for anything beyond how close my grades are to a deficit, because creed and identity aren’t numerical.

Dreams are not numbers. Employers don’t hire for radicalists of progression, idealistic thinkers, or upholders of equality. So I will write until my tendons go lax every night, and try not to drown in the tide of your numbers that have been affixed to me. I will scream aimlessly into the void that is life to which I could just as easily whisper, or more self-fulfillingly, elude, but I’d rather spend my lifetime trying to fill it before it consumes me. We all die a statistic anyways.

I am a number, but I am also a human being that doesn’t deserve to be graphed, manipulated, calculated, or exploited. You are too.