What is Human Value?

 I ponder this question so often and I think to myself, what is human value and who has it? Who gets to decide who has value and what metrics do we use to assign this value? I think about my personal history and how that's shaped my perspective on my thoughts and feelings about why I feel I am a person of no value, but I also think about the therapies I've had, and the interactions I've had with friends and those who are my chosen family, and how I'm capable of assigning a very high value upon those people. 

It's not just about being told you aren't a person of worth, because those specific words were never said directly to me, but it was always made clear in the actions towards me. How my ex husband would yell at me with an empty whisky glass next to the couch in the living room that he'd made his bed, and called me a bitch in our bedroom doorway, not allowing me to leave or to have peace by forcing the door to stay open. It's in being beaten as a child for reasons you don't even understand, hell, I was even slapped across my face but my own mother two weeks before my wedding, the wedding I thought I was fleeing from abuse. I sat there thinking god I hope this red mark goes away by next Saturday so I don't look like shit on my wedding day. 

There were little things that all added up along the way, being told I was a faggot and a lesbian in middle school, being punched in elementary school, having a soccer ball kicked at my head and breaking my glasses in elementary school, having my books slapped out of my hands and kicked down the hall in high school, and my own choir director telling me I got the worst scoring of everyone who auditioned for choir in the school and said I was tone deaf because she just frankly hated me and my talent. It was so bad she refused to let me sing in any of the higher choirs, forcing me into the girls only choir, making it impossible for me to get any kind of music scholarship for college. So I was forced to drop out of high school and auditioned for the Kansas City Youth Symphony Chorus, which I was the only student of hers that made that chorale, because, surprise, I could actually sing, and I actually sung and still sing very well. So well that between my dancing ability and my singing ability at the time the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance was "courting" me in 11th grade to apply and possibly look at going for a dual program. 

Needles to say, that experience of a teacher forcing me out of school set a precedent. My whole life it's been one thing after another making it clear that I am not a person of value and having no value means i don't belong in any space. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of my medical issues and how those issues alone and being disabled lower my perceived value. That's an entire other day of explanation I'll go back to some other time. So as you can see each experience throughout my life has very clearly shown me that I personally don't have value. I bring nothing of value to society by not being able to work, and I've tried volunteering, again, a story for another time, and all that did was go disastrously wrong. People didn't want my kind of help. 

Now add in the fact that I'm disabled and homeless and my value is not only nonexistent, in fact it's made clear to me that I, in fact, owe the American people for my supposed laziness, the lies I'm clearly telling and am in cahoots with all of my doctors with to have been declared a disabled person so I can collect a measly sum of money no one can actually live off, because by god they must pay their hard earned money towards taxes to pay for me being to disabled to work to support myself and afford housing. I'm such a government leech that I'm taking more than I deserve, therefore my monetary value as a human is quite literally worthless because I take more than I give. There's no belief that a disabled person has anything of value to contribute to society unless it's monetary. 

It's been made extremely clear to me that I am not worth even basic things like a roof over my head, running water, access to my own refrigerator to put my medication, and electricity to plug in my medical equipment. My value is so low that instead of making it a priority for me to not get more ill by forcing me to live in my car permanently it's just easier to to leave me unhoused. 

That's how I know my value. I'm not worthy of the very basic of life's necessities. I'm only worth nothing. I'm only worth no services and living in my car.