Now, faced with his father’s urgent need for a life-saving transplant, he stands at a crossroads of raw, conflicting emotions—torn between the instinct to hate and the complex reality of family. The past’s wounds ache fiercely, yet the future demands a reckoning with the man who once broke him.
My father was abusive to me (20sM) but was never abusive to my siblings (all 8+ years younger than me). We’re full siblings. He is my father as much as theirs. But he always treated me like shit and our mother allowed it so I don’t have anything too nice to say about her either.
In her own way she tried to be there for me. But she didn’t save me from him and she sure as hell didn’t prioritize making my life better.
The abuse my father inflicted on me was physical and emotional and it lasted my entire childhood. I know he never did the same to my siblings. They told me (and I know not everyone can see it) but I have witnessed him with them and the difference is night and day.
I’d even say he was a good parent to them and if I didn’t exist he could be called a good father overall. But I was there and he did abuse and hate me. He didn’t care what happened to me.
I’m not going into specifics about which organ or what his condition is. But my father is now sick and needs a transplant. Think kidney or liver. I’ll also say it wasn’t self-inflicted this condition because I know that gets asked when stuff like this comes up.
My mother and siblings were all tested and didn’t match, my father’s siblings and some of their kids were tested and there wasn’t a match. Some of his friends got tested and they weren’t a match.
They have him on the transplant list but he gets sicker and they don’t know if a match will come forward in time.
My siblings reached out to me to ask me to get tested and donate if I’m a match. They told me it’s looking really bad and he could die. They said they can’t lose him and they know I hate him, they know he put me through hell and abused me.
But they wanted me to do it for them instead of him. So they can have him for another however many years. They were pleading and frantic and even offered to make sure I got some money from our parents to make up for everything.
I felt bad for them and how awful they felt but I told them I couldn’t put myself through something like that to save his life. I said even for them it was too big of an ask.
They brought up how serious this is again and I told them I know but it won’t be from me if he gets what he needs. I told them I needed them to accept it and focus on being there with him.
They said some stuff after. I won’t go into it all and I don’t even mad because they’re still so young and their experience with the man is SO different than mine. None of them were ever abused.
But I have grappled with should I have agreed for them. At least getting tested and knowing if everyone else wasn’t a match the likelihood I would be was tiny anyway and I could have spared them the upset.
AITA?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) faces a profound ethical dilemma rooted in past trauma: whether to potentially save the life of an abusive father by donating an organ, primarily to ease the emotional burden on their younger, non-abused siblings. The central conflict is the OP’s need to protect their own well-being and maintain boundaries against the deep, understandable grief and desire of their siblings to keep their father alive.
Given the severe, lifelong abuse inflicted by the father, is the OP morally obligated, even implicitly, to undergo medical testing for a transplant to satisfy the emotional needs of their siblings, or does the right to self-preservation and freedom from past abusers supersede all familial obligation in this medical context?
Here’s how people reacted:
I’m sorry you have a shitty father. Like you, my father prioritized my brother over and above everything else. He took care of me, you know, the usual food and clothes, etc.. However, he just had no interest in me. In some old Italian families, it’s the first boy that gets treated like a prince. I am his only daughter. My mom even says that now. She divorced him in 1978. Probably one of the best things she ever did for herself and for my brother and I. My father has been gone six years. I still deal with the guilt, even though I was not the one to ruin the relationship. I tried.
Something to think about!!🤔
Don’t let them coerce you, your father doesn’t deserve anything from you, he should have thought about that before being a pos.
Your siblings ask you to have a surgery as a favor to them? That’s really a bit much and massive emotional manipulation.
You can tell the doctor that you don’t actually want to donate and that you were pressured into getting tested and the doctor will just say you’re not a match.
You owe the man nothing but going through the motions should help keep your family off your back
I think we both no the answer to that question. NTA.
And you need to stop hanging out with the Flying Monkeys.
I think we both know the answer to that so my answer as OP’s was NO!
ONE TRILLION PERCENT YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM NOR THE ASSHOLE!!!!!
FUCK YOU SPERM DONOR!!!!!
May he forever live where it is warm and get what is coming to him for all of his sins!!!!!
INFO: Have your parents ever offered this before your father fell ill?
Heck, has HE asked you? Or is he a coward in this situation, too?
NTA. Save your kidney for someone who would appreciate it.
That way it gets everyone off your csse
Tell them not to ask you again.
NTA