She refuses to undergo surgery and give up her liver for her estranged father, and her family is disowning her over it. So, she reaches out to Reddit — in a post that has since been deleted — to see if she’s the problem here or if it is her family. “AITA,” or “Am I the Ahole,” is a subreddit designed exactly for stories like this one. In moments where people second-guess their own morals, they can anonymously ask for the input of a wider audience and get some more perspective on the situation. The users then vote overall on who is right and wrong in the situation, specifically, who the “ahole” is. RELATED: Woman Won’t Allow Husband To Go To Funeral Of The Baby He Fathered With A Mistress This woman’s story in particular, while too early for a verdict, got many users heated, many people echoing each other’s points. It is unsurprising that it caused such a fuss, as her story is truly shocking.
Her father had irreparably damaged her childhood.
The woman who reached out to Reddit almost immediately goes into the backstory of the situation. As she tells the readers, she is the oldest child, and her father left when she was only 10 years old, taking one of her brothers with him. Also, she explains his less-than-ideal presence in her life before leaving their family behind for his new woman, saying, “he was an alcoholic, and was drunk and abusive.” But the damage of him leaving was just as real. After he left, splitting up her and her siblings, her mother had a difficult time raising two children on her own. The woman recalls, “My mom was a wreck after he left, she was heavily depressed for so long.”
Her father reached out only recently.
Only two years before his liver failed, her father reached out to her and her siblings, attempting to apologize and reconcile with his estranged children. From the sound of it, his daughter probably chose not to meet with him that day. According to her brothers, who did decide to meet up with him, she knows that “he said he was sorry for what he did to us and he was going to AA and rehab or whatever.”
Recently, they received a disturbing call.
When they got a call saying that their father was in the hospital, at first, they thought he was just drunk because he had been found wandering around outside, confused. Drunk or not, they found that the situation was much worse when they arrived at the hospital, the daughter writing that “the doctors said he had last stage liver failure and needed a liver transplant.” Jack, the second-oldest sibling, volunteered right away, but turned out not to be a match. Meanwhile, her other brother had cancer, so he could not donate. That left only her. After the entire family pressured her, she reluctantly agreed to do the tests to see if she’d be a match, which she was.
The pressure from her family mounted into a blowout.
After learning that his daughter was a match, her family assumed that she would donate her liver, and told everyone as such. She wrote, “The doctors came to me and said they’d heard the good news, and wanted to get started on the surgery right away, and I had to sign some stuff.” RELATED: Woman Outs Cheating Ex-Husband As Gay To His Mother — But Wonders If She Is In The Wrong She would soon be going under the knife if she did not speak up soon, so she clarified to the doctors that she refused to give her father her liver. This is when her family comes in, shouting at her and trying to guilt her into donating, until she spoke up, saying, “I have no bond with my him, I feel no love for him, I don’t consider him family. I don’t care if he lives or dies, I’d actually prefer if he died.” After that, both sides of her family have shunned her almost entirely, with only a few messages saying that they were disowning her and that she was a “cold hearted bitch who wants her father dead.”
Who is the a**hole?
While the post was removed before it could reach a final verdict, the comments overwhelmingly supported her decision. Many commentors especially pointed out the negligence of the doctors, saying that they should have been trying to stop the obvious pressure from her family and that the woman should have received counseling before donating. Other commentors pointed out the unfair standards she is held to when compared to her dad. And finally, many felt that the context wasn’t necessary to know that the woman wasn’t the a**hole, arguing that nobody should be forced to go through a major surgery like that for anyone if they don’t want to. We can only hope that her family finds the perspective to understand and forgive her; although, there’s no guarantee that she’d want that after they revealed their true colors this harmfully. RELATED: Man Refuses To ‘Babysit’ Daughter After Wife Asks For Break From Kids Amanda Hartmann is a writer and editorial intern at YourTango who writes on news and entertainment.
