Living With A Monster

Today is a Friday. To be exact, Its Friday the 19th of January, 2018. I remember damn near everything about Fred, including one of his most aggressive dogs, and the one I got along with the most, Tracer. He was one of the five German Shorthair Pointers that Fred owned. He was the Alpha of his small pack and had a aggressive temperament. Tracer disliked literally everyone but me. Tracer disliked Fred, his owner. Not too surprising considering Fed wasn't exactly nice to his dogs. He didn't treat them as pets, he treated them as tools. He didn't love them, he loved the control he had over them. He raised them as wild animals, he gave them raw meat, let them fight each other, and he would "lose" a dog whenever it wasn't useful anymore. Fred was a terrible guy. He tried to convince my mother to drop my older brother, Skippy and I off on a random road. He was a control freak, and in some ways, he was narcissistic. He was a monster. My mom knew Fred for a long time before they got together. He was right there with her during the divorce between my father and her. I'm pretty sure that Fred orchestrated most, or maybe even all of what went on. My first impression of him was completely inaccurate. I initially thought that he was a good guy with phenomenal cooking skills, whom cared for my mom. He was one of those people that had an air of power surrounding them. Fred wasn't a good person and as far as I'm concerned, he still is. I spent nearly three years living with him, and during that time, he went to jail for three days, he also went to a treatment center, my older brother and I went to foster care, and my mom became a different person.


Frederick Ehlen came into my life when I was in 1st grade. He seemed nice, his food always tasted amazing, and he had five dogs! We lived in a log mansion in Akeley, Nevis, and we had our lives set. Everything was fine, great even, until about two months into living there, things began to go wrong. Fred wasn't as nice and he was gradually becoming worse. My mom at this point, had conceived my younger brother Alex, and my younger sister Ashley. Ashley was a tiny little bean in the crib, and Alex was a fiery headed ankle-biter. They were young, loud, and innocent. Time passed and what we had built there, our foundation was deteriorating (metaphorically speaking). Fred was becoming more aggressive and things kept going wrong. He eventually made some terrible mistakes, and in return, my mom's relationship with him ended. Don't get me wrong, I am not downplaying what he did in any way, but the details are hard to share when everything is still fresh in your head. He was a monster and a father. I doubt he will ever change. He was a prominent adult figure in my life, and probably will continue to be until my sibling are old enough to realize who he is and base their decisions off their realizations. This was a snippet from the entire experience I had when living with a monster.