Someone once said that anger keeps us free, or was it that anger keeps us freer than when we started? I would meet my dad every single day I was with him. Some days he was the dad with greased back hair and dark sunglasses covering his drunken eyes, and some, he was the one with the flannel shirt… beach balls spilling out of the pocket with his blue eyes sober and solemn as ever. I hated those dark sunglasses. I hated that grease that slicked back his hair. I would shake my stubby, little fingers through his pasted back hair and “messy it up” again like the dad I liked best. He would always smear it back to the way it was. I would just keep running my fingers through his hair, making it messier then the first time. He would then just walk away leaving my hands greasy and my face puzzled. Now I was the one slipping from his grasp. He is living with a world of personalities, darting from one to the other, never quite confortable with the one he is. Though, the alcohol is the poison… slipping his sunglasses behind his ears and sliming the gel into his hair once again. It used to be that I could swing my arms around him and have to tightly clasp my wrist together behind him, white knuckled and red skinned slipping, but not letting go. He is not that dad anymore. He doesn’t hug anymore… he does, but it is like trying to hug a wet fish; slippery and resistant. He wears clothes that are a size to small and jeans that are pre-ripped. I don’t mind pre-ripped, he just never wore jeans in the first place. He now shaves his face, wears cologne and has shoes that click when they hit the floor. He just isn’t my dad anymore, he just isn’t. The word “father” is like chewing mud as a child… trying so hard to tell myself it was pie, but blaring out so loudly was that is was just mud. Cold, wet mud… nothing else… but saying “I love you” was a lie – said by both and heard by both. It has been nearly a year since I have seen his face, heard his voice. “Your too sensitive” he always told me… well maybe I am. Maybe it only takes a small pinch to make me bleed or a light breeze to make me cold. Maybe all my crocked toes and bruises on my legs from the constant mistaken fortes and pique’s sway the way I walk. My hair is thin and breaks easily, the common cold is a bit more common to my body and I might fall one to many times over my own feet. But couldn’t an overdose on sensitivity make you stronger in the end? I like to believe sensitivity is a blessing and one day it might work in my favor rather than his. When I was in kindergarten, I never understood capitalization, if you are supposed to capitalize the important things, why wouldn’t you capitalize “dad?” Now I understand…