On Identity as an Equation:
My daily struggle is mourning
Everything I can’t remember about my past
Everything I don’t know about where I came from
Everything I was never taught and had to learn on my own
All of it adding up to an undeveloped identity
Put on the back burner when the priority was surviving a life I never asked for
How can I finish the puzzle if I’m missing half the pieces?
Variables undefined
Corrupt data
Negative numbers
Do you remember balancing equations in algebra?
3x-2 = x+4
What you do to one side, you must do to the other
And then you’ll find the solution
It hits me all at once
I cannot make sense of the problem behind me
All on its own
But if I consider the numbers and letters in front of me
I can balance this equation
And find the sum of who I am
As I drift bit by bit into unconsciousness
I am 39
And I am so sad, and when I wake up I will buy my friend a Christmas present
Oh
I remember
Ten years old with my most prized possessions on the floor in front of me
Wrapping them up one by one to give away to my friends
I loved their anticipation, their smiles, their joy
Oh
I am so excited to go to Arizona in February, to climb and explore and discover
Those mountains I saw in the distance on long car trips
Six years old hiding in the backseat while my mother ran from the police
Now ground I will cover with steady and strong legs at thirty nine
Oh
It hurt so bad to be left out and alone at twelve
Because my aunt was mad at me again
My heart skips a beat when my absence is noticed at thirty nine
Someone wanted me in their space today
Oh
If I am patient enough to see and feel and hear
To understand
I can see the raw data I am handed day after day
Integers I can plug in
I can subtract the pain from yesterday
If I add the joy I encountered today
What sets my soul on fire now
Are all the things that left me cold before
All the love I longed for in my years of loneliness
Is the love I seek to offer others in my current state of ease
Every hug I needed
Every “I love you” I didn’t hear
Every time someone finally showed up
Then
I insist on multiplying for my babies
Today
I must never cease collecting data
Because where I am today
Isn’t as simple as where I came from yesterday
But rather
A dynamic push and pull
Of then and now
Morphing and shifting with each day that passes
I cannot define myself by where I have been
But instead I can use the language of tomorrow to translate
What I was always meant to become
Identity isn’t fixed
The equation never stagnates
And applying abstract humanity
To concrete mathematics
Continues to teach me how very whole I always have been