I choose to be free (2)

I choose to be free

It is a difficult decision

My fingers still scrabble at the ledge even as I 

speak these words

going back against my resonant certainty

a betrayal a mixed message a last ditch attempt 

to save myself from drowning but

I choose to be free

to not fight battles I will never win for prizes I 

would never ask for blinded by the sharpness of my own pain

I choose to see that pain and to be free

I choose to rid myself of second chances of second guesses of second thoughts

to know everything I am doing I am doing because I am trying I am trying god am I trying

I choose to know that to love myself for all my destructive tendencies

For all my messiness (sitting at the dining table Sophia says, no one is every too much) maybe

I am too much and even so I choose to love myself even though 

I did not put the smiley face at the end of the text or the exclamation point and maybe it was a form

of withholding or maybe it was (and it was) an act of protection and I choose to love myself in that

protection and not plague myself with doubt for not performing

I choose to love myself even while I hope to be free of that 

To speak my mind in the winding path between appeasing and withholding 

To find the truth

I choose to be free 

even in the process of it

I choose to be free of that which I am holding on to like a life preserver

when it is nothing but a dirty plastic bag

I choose to love myself for holding that dirty plastic bag

for hugging it to my chest, I choose to say, oh baby and I choose to hug myself

to pull myself out of the water

to sit on the edge with my feet in the pool

and to look over the ocean

and to breathe

and to choose

to choose

to goddamn choose

to be 

free.