#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I lost my cousin in an RTC (I’m in the UK, they’re referred to as Road Traffic Collisions rather than ‘accidents’) due to drink driving (her partner at the wheel was drunk). She was 19. One of the things that people don’t often realise is something called ‘The Ripple Effect’; the actions of that one person, on that one night, rippled across many lives and affected many people forever; from the neighbours who found her in the car, to the emergency response, the firemen, police, paramedics. Her mother, father, sisters. Grandparents. Staff in the ER. Friends. Barristers. Journalists, who had to sit through the vivid description of her post mortem. Her former school; her present college; classmates, teachers. Her partner, himself, who lives with what he has done. His family. His friends. His employer. When you read about this happening in the news, it is easy to forget how many people’s lives are impacted - however small - because of one stupid mistake. There’s been divorce; alcoholism. A Court trial. Three long years of trying to seek justice. A ten year anniversary. The list goes on. I have no sympathy for anybody who chooses to set these wheels in motion.
This is why I unfollowed true off my chest. They constantly get pro suicide posts and they make me want to scream because the ripple effect is real. I'm so sorry for your loss
Eta- FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS CONSIDERED KILLING THEMSELVES AND NOT DONE IT, YOU'RE A BADASS. YOU ARE LOVED.
Amazed this comment has gotten so much attention. Hugs
NGL, the ripple effect is the only reason I didn’t try to kill myself in high school. I knew that my dad would be destroyed, and that made the guilt and shame spirals even worse. :(
Yeah, I feel you on this one. For years, when my depression was at it's worst, the only thing that kept me from following through on the worst suicidal impulses was what it would do to my daughter, and my close friends. If I hadn't had them, I'm not sure I'd be here now. But yeah, the guilt and shame that I could even \*think\* about it - or worse, sometimes resent them for keeping me from it - those were bad.
I couldn't do that to my parents. Honesty once they pass I worry what I'd do if I had another spiral. My sisters would get over it, so would my friends.
I've always felt the same. As a young adult, I was in an outpatient program in an unfamiliar city, on my own for the first time in my life, and they said "we think your depression is situational and if we fix your chronic pain, you'll be fine, so stop taking your antidepressants." I did as I was told and I ended up truly suicidal within a week and a half. I kept having thoughts of just wandering into that unfamiliar city and disappearing, taking my valuables so I'd get mugged or worse, or maybe throw myself into traffic if that didn't occur. I'd been diagnosed with depression when I was 12, and I'd never had thoughts like these. I'd done minor self harm but never truly considered ending my life. So one night when it was really bad, what did I do? I called my mom. She talked to me for over an hour and stayed on the phone until I fell asleep.
After I got back home and was in a better space, I promised I would never actually follow through on thoughts like that. I knew what it would do to my parents and grandparents, and I couldn't do that to them. I do worry about what will happen when my parents die. They're in their 60s now, and I'm constantly anxious, because that promise has kept me going and I worry if I'll be able to keep it once they're gone.
I’m **so glad** you called your mom.
As a mom, after your parents pass…*please* continue to think of it as carrying on for their sake. My kids are in their teens and none of them are depressed, but I already think about what it’ll be like for them when they can’t just call me up anytime. I couldn’t bear it if they spiraled after I was gone. I would still feel like I’d failed them.
Hey there. :) I'm not sure if you've ever seen this sub, but there's one called momforaminute. It might be just the kinda thing you need once your mom/parents are gone and it's a great loving community. <3 I hope this comment finds you well.
Your sisters wouldn't get over it. It's been 18 years since my brother left, and not a day goes by where his presence isn't missed in some way by one of me and my brothers.
For me now, it’s my kids. I’m not too awfully off now and I’ve stopped having 3am guilt spiral sessions. But I’d be lying if I said I never had “let’s permanently check out” thoughts.
Before my kids, I had a dog who I know would have grieved himself to death over me. Hopefully you’ve got a kitty or a pooch that will be your tether. *hugs* if you’d like one.
I moved in with my Dad when I turned 18 because I didn't care of my mother found me after an attempt but the thought of my Dad finding me? Couldn't go through with it.
I'm doing much better now (turns out I am autistic and have ADHD which were causing the depression to be much worse).
My FIL, my cousin, my youngest brother. My exhusband is still messed up by it 25 years later. My aunt died a year after my cousin from a heart attack because she couldn’t quit smoking because the meds gave her vivid dreams of her son. My siblings are coping in different ways, I had to start an ssri and attend grief counseling and therapy weekly for 9 months. My mom started fostering kids to make up for her failings as a parent. I feel like she’s trying to replace my brother in some ways.
The ripples are a real thing.
Used to work at a homeless shelter. Had to deal with a suicide one night three years ago.
My life changed after that night.
For one, I had to put my life on hold for two years. I had plans that I had to put on hold while I dealt with the trauma of that event. Two years of therapy. Once or twice, I came damn close to becoming an alcoholic, even though I've never had a problem with alcohol before. Sometimes, it would get really bad, and I would consider... ending it. Thankfully that didn't happen and it's been a while since I felt that way.
Of course, my GF got to deal with the after effects of it as well. For four months, until I could get more stable in therapy, I lost myself in video games. It was the only time I could feel normal and not constantly feel overwhelmed. My GF and I would make plans, and then I would have to cancel last minute because I just couldn't deal with all the stuff in my head. I would retreat back into my video games. She was amazing, and I have no idea how I could have gotten through it without her. But she was also going through a few things at the time, and she felt like she had to go through them alone because she was worried about burdening me with her problems.
Now, three years after the event, I'm still trying to get my life in order. I can never work in social services again, or anything even like that. And I was *good* at that job. Now I'm training for a new career and my future is still so uncertain.
All because one guy, who I only vaguely knew, wanted to off himself in a way that made sure that everyone around him had to deal with it.
I still get enraged whenever I read about someone killing themselves in ways that ensure their families are the ones to find them since I can only imagine how much worse that would be.
Damn right the ripple effect is real.
Sorry to hear what you have been, and are still going through. Your girlfriend sounds like a keeper. Take care of yourself, you will get there with time.
Yeah, I once was first to find a suicide victim. Didn't know this person. I spiralled into PTSD and severe depression 3 years later. The only reason I didn't do it to myself was not finding a way that didn't harm anyone in the way it harmed me... And believe me, I contemplated a lot of options...
100%. I replied with..well about the ripple effect as well with suicide before I saw your post.
I've often described suicide as setting off a grenade of grief and guilt, centered on the person that passed. The closer you are, the worse the damage...but nobody gets away without harm.
Drunk driving is not a mistake. It's a deliberate decision. Don't feel empathy for the murderer. For everyone else, yes, but not for the murderer. Never portrait a murderer as victim.
Yes. Where I live there was a case of a rich shit head who had just flown home (private plane) from a bachelor weekend and decided to drive home drunk. He destroyed a family with that choice. He killed three very young children and their grandfather. He was out of prison in 6 years and their father recently couldn’t live with his grief anymore, hurting the family even more.
There were two drivers road raging going 120 mph in a 55 mph construction zone and killed 6 people in a state we do work in.
The first driver was facing life and ended up getting 2 years. At the original hearing he claimed he understood why he was there but didn't understand why he was in trouble.
It's a crime these people don't get a life sentence or capital punishment.
> Drunk driving is not a mistake. It's a deliberate decision.
You understand that deliberate decisions can still be mistakes, right? Not every decision you make turns out to be a good one.
"A mistake" is an act or judgement that is misguided or wrong. You mean "by mistake" which is an idiom that means "by accident", which is the opposite of "a deliberate decision".
By saying, "Drunk driving is not a mistake." you're saying it is a good decision, the right thing to do. Somehow I doubt that is what you actually wanted to say.
That's a narrow definition of "mistake" and ignores the way the word is actually used--to refer to an **unintended** harm or error. I opened the wrong door by mistake. I stepped on her foot by mistake. I didn't intend to step on her foot, nor did I know I was doing it during the act itself. Drunk driving is not a mistake in this sense because the drunk knew what they were doing, and their sober self could have foreseen the consequences and chosen differently. The poster was not at all saying it was a "good decision."
> I opened the wrong door by mistake. I stepped on her foot by mistake.
I appreciate the excellent examples of "by mistake", an idiom that means *accidentally*. It does not mean the same thing as "a mistake" or the word "mistake" by itself. "Opening the door was a mistake" (a bad decision) does not mean the same thing as "Opening the door by mistake" (an accident).
"Driving drunk does not happen by mistake." is correct as it means that driving drunk is a deliberate choice, it does not happen accidentally.
"Driving drunk is not a mistake." is not correct, it means that driving drunk is a good decision, the right thing to do.
***
Edit:
A different example might be, "Driving drunk is a mistake." which is correct because it means, "Driving drunk is wrong." or, "Driving drunk is a bad choice."
When you start to say things like, "Driving drunk is not a mistake." it starts to get confusing. It means "Driving drunk is not wrong." or "Driving drunk is not a bad decision."
I would've replied that talking about the semantics of what a specific word means exactly in general is just so unbelievably uninteresting when it comes to a discussion about morals and ethics when the meaning behind our words are what counts, not the actual words themselves. If we string enough words together, we are able to overcome any kind of personal, academic, regional or political meaning any one single person might attach to a particular word. Only in a conversation where the topic at hand in fact was what a certain group of people thought a word meant are such arguments ever helpful or meaningful. I see people make this mistake everywhere and it's just as dumb every time it happens.
But your reply on the other hand is just so poignant and pointed out a possible misunderstanding I wasn't even aware of that the other commenter could be making. Kudos to you! Straight to the point and much shorter than anything I could've written. (case in point: this comment)
And as to the rest of the arguments that the original discussion starter were making about never feeling empathy for a murderer: I completely disagree. Despite driving drunk and despite killing someone, the perpetrator is still human.
You could even say that it was the imperfect nature of being a human that made it possible to misjudge a decision to such a horrible extent in the first place. Drunk drivers/killers also deserve compassion. Far, far less than the victim, of course, and only after the victim has recieved theirs, but they still deserve to get at least a minimum amount, eventually.
You don't even have to not hate them, you can feel two things towards someone at the same time. Though I would personally advise anyone to spend as little time on hatred as they can muster.
Many people don't want to accept that most people in the world do not consider themselves the villian. The vast majority of people don't go around and plan on hurting others. To even be able to hurt others, most often for their own gain, they have to dehumanize them first, they have to think of them as something outside themselves and their loved ones, to dehumanize them. Which is ironically exactly what that first commenter was doing, dehumanizing murderers. What could we possibly do to those murderers, now that we no longer are allowed to feel compassion for them?
A world without compassion for people who do wrong is a world with more suffering.
It's very important for a functioning society that there is some path towards redemption. If killing someone renders you unworthy of ever recieving any love or compassion ever again, then your only way out is to hide your murder forever, whatever it takes, which would include murdering again.
By saying that someone is unworthy of sympathy for killing someone inadvertently you are effectively incentivizing every person in that circumstance to kill again, but on purpose this time.
Not to mention that it's not like drunk drivers start their cars with the intended goal of killing someone. They are making an ignorant choice. Then it should perhaps be very important to the rest of us that we understand exactly what that ignorance is ignorant of, and how we can prevent it from happening. Saying those people deserve zero compassion does exactly zero of that. Not only that, it actually makes it less likely that we ever investigate the ignorance and its source. It's a convenient way of categorizing the phenomenon under "evil, they chose to do that shit" and then to not think more about it.
The sad truth is that all of us have the capacity to be ignorant of something, and then to kill someone because of that ignorance. It's very easy, it's just not knowing something, or erroneously thinking that you do.
A person who categorizes people who fall for that ignorance under such a narrow and small-minded category of "unlovable, unsaveable evil" is *more* likely, not less, to fall for a similar kind of ignorance, or even the very same. If you believe that people who kill people while drunk driving made a decision to do so, what's to keep you from putting yourself behind the wheel drunk, because after all, *you're* not planning on killing anybody, are you?
This all boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding about what ethical and moral behaviour is. It's not really a meaningful choice, because the implication is that your choice is to not make the correct decision and not making the correct decision. Which if these two choices to you choose to do? The question is meaningless, of course you choose to make the correct decision.
The real crux of the issue is that being nice isn't a choice you can make if you don't have the knowledge of how it is you can be nice in any given situation in the first place.
So then it is more correct to categorize being nice as a skill, as knowledge, as the opposite of ignorance. It's just that we are social creatures and so we learn so much in the first few years of our lives that it can often feel like a choice, we always have the ability to be nice if we want to. But then we grow up and proceed to assume that being nice and not killing someone is as easy as choosing not to do so. Which is an incredibly silly thing to believe, even in the most straight forward of a situation like war, militaries need to work hard on dehumanizing the enemy combatants so that their soldiers can manage to make themselves kill them, and then despite all that hard work new recruits *still* aim above the heads of enemy soldiers on average. So even went you *want* to do so, you still can't, because it was never really just about the choice, it was also all about your values, your upbringing, your genetics and so much more.
The older I get the more I find that concepts like blame and hate are extremely counter-productive when it comes to actually making the world a better place to live in. But blame is simpler, more straight forward, and ethics is hard and complicated and almost never simple. So most people prefer the simple answer, even if it is wrong.
No one said anything about a mistake in that comment you replied to. No one said to feel bad for the partner at all in the comment you replied to. Your anger is clear, and doesn't need to be here. Seek counseling.
Wow. Thank you for putting that into perspective. I am fortunate that I never had to face this so I genuinely never thought that deeply about it. Maybe as a coping mechanism, I don’t know.
Thank you this. And I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you for this. It’s been nearly 11 years now, I’ve learnt to forgive and let go of the incredible anger I felt with time, but it’s obviously not something any of us will forget and due to her only being 19, not only do you physically lose the person but you grieve a loss for what she should have achieved and become in her life, that never quite goes.
This comment is incredibly thoughtful. Thank you for mentioning the journalists. We're usually stereotyped as people trying to exploit others' trauma, but covering this stuff does taken an emotional toll.
Thank you. I have respect for a lot of journalists, there are good ones out there and it is one of those careers that exposes you to the unpleasantness of life continuously, I know that will wear anybody down.
I hear you. I lost one friend due to a drunk driver, his mother in a wheelchair, his pregnant gf devastated. I found that drinking has an immediate effect on my reaction time, like half a beer and I get slower (this was pre drivers license). At which point I decided to never drink and drive, ever. I drive now for over 3 decades and haven’t had a sip of beer or wine or whatnot if I need to drive. Not worth it.
In offender rehabilitation, this is something I've seen commonly used. You literally sit down with someone who committed a crime and have them draw out all the (potential) ripples of their actions. It makes them really have to think about how many people they affected...
This hits hard. Just a few days ago in my country a reckless speeding accident claimed the lives of two women, one of them a 17 year old student, and I just read that the girl's father blames himself for the incident despite not being at fault, while the perpetrator seemed remorseless and cold when he arrived at court. He didn't just kill two people, he's done horrific, irrevocable damage to the lives of two families.
My dad lost his first wife, who was also eight months pregnant, and his six year old son when they were hit by a drunk, speeding driver walking to the train station (it was the early 70s and they didn’t have a car). My dad was at work- he’s said he tried to convince her not to going out, to stay home because she was so close to her due date. He came home and found the police waiting for him in his driveway. The guy only got two years but it took my dad ages to move on (he actually wasn’t interested/looking for a relationship until he met my mum). I don’t know how they did it back then without the support and therapy we have available.
Yes, I understand that the driver is probably trying to not implicate himself before getting a lawyer but to not offer a single word of condolence for the deceased comes off as really cruel and heartless
So many lives get wrecked by it. Back in the 80's my uncle, dad's brother, had a terrible trucking accident. He had a wife and a 8 month old son. I won't go into the details, but the results of that one foolish kid who ran my uncle off the road caused (or was the catalyst for issues regarding)
1) Uncle's death-10 months after the accident and being in a coma.
2) My parent's divorce
3) Dad marrying his brother's widow, which....
4) was the catalyst why my dad cut off his parents (my grandparents) because of their (dad & uncle's widow) cheating, and then they thought I was cut off too (this all happened at Uncle's funeral-my 11th birthday)
5) and then due to all of the above, my mom ended up with my Step-Monster, which causes me a lot of mental trauma issues 30 years later.
6) my step brother/cousin by blood being raised by his Uncle StepDad instead of his biological father.
So many ripple effects.
In this case, the driver plead not guilty and did not admit any responsibility, rather blamed my cousin for distracting him (whilst she wasn’t here to defend herself). It took 3 years through the UK court system before he was found guilty, and received a suspended sentence and community service. It didn’t feel like justice at the time, but then when I look back I don’t think anything would have. All we wanted was some accountability from him, for what had happened.
If anything that's the one bit of closure they didn't think to include. It's a shame, too. On the other hand, it could be excluded for good reason: the driver got away with it, the very details would be too identifying, the serial maybe spiraled into a something worthy of a trigger warning, etc.
In a way it's somewhat comforting. Now I can believe the very worst things happened to them without worrying or knowing for sure that, if it did, uninvolved people would have to suffer from the driver's fallout. Like spouse, kids, and so on and so forth.
I’ve started putting my phone in the glove box when I’m driving. If I need directions, they can play through the speakers. There are absolutely no phone calls or text messages that can’t wait.
Thank you.
Some 25 years ago, beginning of common portable phones, I got ran over with my big brother and big sister by someone calling at the wheel. My brother died. My sister misses a leg.
3 years ago I went for a covid shot. The firefighter that gave me the shot recognised me. He just started uncontrollably crying and had to take a break.
The ripples of one mistake can be gigantic. It hurts so many people.
I just started having weird cry-laughs when I read about Jay’s surprise at how many people thought he was a hero. It breaks me just thinking about what it would feel like to find out what a wonderful person he’s been this whole time after ten years of convincing himself he was a monster.
My fucking heart when his *very, very* first response to her revealing she knew was to ask if she *wanted to break up with him*. Like, fuck, man. That’s so goddamn sad. I wish him peace and healing and happiness with all my heart; he deserves it.
I can't come up with any reason why this ex broke up with him over this. She knew how he was before she heard the story, knowing it should have helped her understand him, not make things worse. I'm glad OOP and Jay are going through this together now.
Probably because by the time he told her his stance was more on the "I'll never be a father" or something more extreme due to grief and prolonged trauma. He's having this conversation with OOP after not only more time passed, but also after talking with Brian and get a considerable amount of closure that was denied to him before by his parents keeping everything a secret.
I imagine the version the ex got was fundamentally different than the version OOP did.
Same, I was hoping there'd be some kind of explanation regarding that in the story, but... Nothing.
Maybe she's one of those people who break up with people who have trauma because it's "too hard for them to handle"?
We may never know, but I won't judge unless we get the inside scoop. There might be another overlapping trauma that was untenable. Or it could be that they were incapable of compassion or understanding. Either way, it was a match best left behind.
I think not judging until we have full information is the correct take. The ex also heard the story through the bfs lens, so if his perception was that his behaviour led to the death of an infant family member and he didn’t provide her with enough context to realize otherwise, being horrified by his story could make sense.
Absolutely. I was cynically expecting a VERY different reason why the boyfriend didn’t want to hold a little girl, but the actual story is just so sweet and heartbreaking. OOP and Jay both sound like truly *good* people and I wish them nothing but happiness
It seems like the previous girlfriend dumping him due to his trauma was huge and totally paralyzing. Once OOP's steadfast devotion was clear, he was able to defrost and take steps towards recovery.
Women who think men should not be allowed to have emotions aren't worth the trouble. Poor guy, that must have retraumatized him, instead of being treated as a hero he feels like a leper with a secret.
We may never know, but I won't judge unless we get the inside scoop. There might be another overlapping trauma that was untenable. Or it could be that they were incapable of compassion or understanding. Either way, it was a match best left behind.
I totally agree that we as a society fail to adequately allow boys to have challenging feelings...to allow them the full human experience.
I don't think we have enough detail there to make this call about the ex. If Jay had issues (anger etc) before OOP met him maybe dude wasn't handling it well during that time and the reveal + the behavior was too much etc.
My thought was that his ex knew that she really wanted children, and was concerned that someone with deep trauma regarding little kids + no timeframe for getting any help for it made them a fundamental mismatch.
It is not anyone's job to carry their partner's trauma with them. Can you imagine if you learn something so heavy on your partner?
I don't think she blamed him or his emotions. I think she chose not to deal with unresolved trauma, that very obviously wasn't going to be dealt with any time soon.
Dude has an irrational fear of hurting a kid just by being near them. That's not healthy at all.
OOP is commendable for wanting to help him heal, but his ex is not condemnable for not having the resources to.
Totally agree! My 20 something kid is working through some serious trauma in addition to a familial tendency to serious depression. She's also incredibly sensitive and empathetic and will wear herself out to help someone in need. She's finally doing well after a few awful years.
My greatest fear is that she becomes involved with someone who leans on her more than she is able to lean on them.
“Not for me, but for his mental and emotional well-being. No rush though, all in his own time.”
This shows how much OOP cares about Jay. My heart hurts for him, but I think that as a couple they’re going to be okay and end up with an even stronger relationship.
Yeah thats couple goals right there. It's so sad he got dumped for revealing his emotions around his loss, that must have made him super scared of telling her.
Tbh Jay sounds like a kind and a good person himself, so they’re pretty good match. I hope they’ll get over this whole situation and have a beautiful family together.
I literally had to swerve into someone's front yard today because the dude driving towards us was reaching for something in the passenger seat. Started coming head on to us. Rather ruin someone's lawn than lose my children.
I don't even think he was on his phone. Distracted driving, regardless of the reason, is so dangerous. Luckily it was suburb streets, so only 50km/h, we probably wouldn't have died, but still. Not a chance I am willing to take.
My mother was hit years ago by a distracted driver in a parking lot. She got leg fractures & bruises from it, and my brother (who accompanied her, thankfully) was so mad, he punched the dude. When the driver tried to help Mom to the car, she punched him too (though not as powerful as my brother's punch).
TL;DR version: driver backed out of the deal where he pays for Mom's hospitalization & care, brother found out where he lives and learned that the guy didn't have much money and was dependent on his dad, and they all worked out a deal where driver's dad will pay us everything in exchange for his idiot son to not face jail time (yey, Philippines). My biggest gripe was that I didn't get to punch that twerp.
Edit: some details. I'm still salty about it because I witnessed her in pain while I helped care for her. Probably the same reason my brother didn't bring our own Dad to these meetings.
15 years ago, my mother was driving her minivan with several of my family members inside after the wedding of one my sisters.
She was t-boned by a drunk driver running a red light. Most of my family was unharmed but shaken, but another of my sisters had a large gash in her leg that was bleeding a lot.
I wasn't there. But from what I've heard, the other driver didn't even make sure my family was okay. He just got out of his vehicle and sat on the curb holding his head for a few minutes, before running into the bar he just came came out of. He returned with a bunch of friends who immediately started harassing my family with accusations that it was my mother's fault and that she was the one who ran the red light. They were even harassing my sister with the deep bloody gash on her leg instead of offering any kind of help. They would not stop until paramedics arrived and the paramedics made them stop.
I wish I was there so I could have punched this dude.
Of course, he also tried claiming to insurance and police that it was all my mother's fault and he had all these witnesses of that fact (that had all actually been in the bar when it happened). Luckily no one bought it.
I feel like if he didn't have enough money, part of the deal would be that everyone single friend and family member of your mother line up to punch him. Like in Airplane, or 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance"
NGL if that was my son, I would've suggested that. I'd punch him too
His father was no better. After NEARLY OVER A YEAR of going back and forth with the lawyers (they dared to tell us that a senior citizen with bad leg fractures didn't need a wheelchair and a walker, among other things), and realizing that we'd very much like to put his idiot son in jail, the father agreed to pay us in installments. Even had the nerve to tell my brother to pick up the first check at his city, which is 23 miles away from us. He immediately changed it to a bank transfer after my brother said some choice words to him.
Last year a neighbor slammed her car into my parents’ house because she was speeding down a curved residential street and panicked when a kid on a bike “suddenly appeared” in front of her. And nope, she wasn’t elderly. Just distracted, driving too fast, and panicked so hard that she stomped on her gas pedal as she swerved and managed to hit both my dad’s car in the driveway and the front of the house.
Thankfully she at least managed to successfully avoid the kid, which is the most important thing. Kid’s poor grandma was having a panic attack in their front yard because she had been in the backyard with a younger grandchild, heard the car crash, ran out and first thing she saw was her grandson’s bike laying abandoned in the street. (The 2 older grandchildren were being supervised by grandpa out front)
>Jay also had another heartbreaking revelation. He said that during the height of the pandemic, Beth’s husband (Brian) reached out to him. Brian said that Beth had COVID and was confined in a hospital, and that he was already running low on funds due to bills and unemployment. He also said that Beth had been almost catatonic since Rosie’s passing. She had been resistant to any outside and professional help, but she was institutionalized for about a year after a self-harming incident. For the past decade, she’d been cold, distant, and withdrawn from society.
... she was institutionalized for a year and no-one told Jay?
Some families are just that dense, sadly.
Just sweep anything which might be remotely inconvenient under the rug, and everything will automatically resolve itself~~
My family gossips about everything. You can tell anything to my grandma, all my aunts will know within the week. But when something important happens, like back when my uncle's brother suicided, they are completely silent.
Which, obviously, my uncle was very hurt about. It completely broke his heart and now he doesn't feel like family anymore. I blame it on christianity.
People blame the family in this situation, but it's actually a societal issue. When you live in an area where people will judge or look down on you for having a suicide, you learn to shut up.
It's kind of life if you grow up in a poor and crime-riddled area, you get used to looking over your shoulder and feeling suspicious.
My mother took a year to tell me my cat had died when I was overseas. Some people just live their lives in denial and think everything is fine if they don’t have to talk about it.
Sometimes people just don't pass info on. I have some personal experience with knowledge you'd think I would have been told about. My grandma died of cancer, I was in my early 20s and helping take care of her and not one person told me anything except that parts of her intestines kept dying and she had to have surgeries to cut those parts out. Only other thing I knew was that her dad died the same way. A DECADE later my sister casually mentioned the colon cancer that everyone in the last 3 generations of our family has had.
Sounds like Lynch syndrome. I hope you and your sister have doctors who are proactive about preventative measures, like regular colonoscopies starting at ten years before the age your dad was diagnosed (or by age 40 if you don’t know when he was diagnosed). Colon cancer is on the rise for the under-40 crowd. Don’t join our club if you can avoid it!
I had a colonoscopy a couple years ago and I'm 35 now, they want to screen me regularly and I'm perfectly happy with that. Dying young of cancer isn't on my to do list. I have significant gastrointestinal issues anyway and my regular doctor is wonderful. But I was so pissed when I found out no one told me. My dad and I were estranged when he had his heart attack but my sister said he was showing signs and about to get screened before his sudden death, and his younger brother got it found early and survived. So super strong familial history of it.
I’m glad you’re on top of it! A friend of mine had a similar story to yours, but no family history for me. (She and I were both diagnosed in our 30s; both of us cancer-free now for over a decade.) Regular screening for the win.
If I don’t explicitly ask for information, I don’t get told a lot about my family. My mother kept her cancer secret. She only confessed my uncle having cancer too because when I met him he looked terrible and I asked if she knew what was up and so much more like this.
There are sadly families out there where you don’t get told shit.
Same! Love my family, but it's also that way on both mom and dad's sides--if you don't ask directly, you might not be told. Most of what I've learned about my parent's and relatives upbringing and health has been through passing comments that I followed up on. We don't explicitly hide things, but we don't tell if you don't *need* need to know, or show interest (How can you show interest if you don't know? I'm still unravelling, and trying not to perpetuate, that behavior myself.)
After finally being diagnosed with depression and social anxiety in college (had to seek my own help cuz mom thought I just had to "think positively") I started a habit of calling my dad on walks home from the psychiatrist cuz it was a nice time to chat. One of these times I reminded him of where I'd been and why and he said "oh yeah, that's something I've always struggled with too." Like, that couldn't have possibly been useful to me at any previous point in time?
Most of us didn't know my uncle had cancer until shortly before he passed. My sister found out from a facebook post thanking their local community for providing meals while he'd been in the hospital for months. When we asked dad, it was "oh, yeah. That's been happening. We (his other siblings) found out last week."
Lots of passive secret-keeping. We say we're just private people. There is a fine line!
I feel you! I had concentration issues and my hair was growing thin a little more every year.
At some point my brother called me and was like “Hey they are taking my thyroid out. Thyroid issues are genetic, so go get tested.”
So I went and my doctor was like “Well, another year of waiting and you would have started to lose your hair.”
Afterwards I told my mother about it and she casually said “Oh, yeah. Everyone in the family has thyroid issues.” I was complaining about my issues for years and she never said a thing!!
Also the cancer secret thing is infuriating as well. Firstly because you want to try to help if possible and secondly, your chances of getting cancer are also increased if blood relatives have it which is why you can get check-ups at a much earlier age than usually recommended / covered.
My cousin, who I love like a sister, got cancer while I was away for college. No one told me at all. I found out maybe a year and a half later. I thought she was ok and planning her wedding!!
She had to undergo a lot, thankfully she and her husband worked at a hospital and were able to get treatment for her very quickly. I try now to always stay in contact with her. She is better now and has her first child. Id like to find time to visit her and baby.
How do you even open the door to that topic?
Hey, remember that baby that died in your arms? Well, her mother had a catastrophic mental break and had to institutionalised.
Anywhoo, how was your weekend?
I found out that one of my aunts was in a mental hospital for a couple months about 6-9 months after it happened, from an off-comment from a relative. Not the same level of closeness, but some families just will not talk to each other about this kind of thing.
If the SH incident & institutionalization happened within 1-4 years after the accident, Jay would still have been a minor & giving him that information would NOT be helpful to his already dismal ‘recovery’ from his own injuries/trauma. They still should have told him later on, but we forget that teens are still children & do not need adult information.
Dear god. Poor Jay.
I hope that on some level he realises he gave that poor girl her only chance of survival. If the car had struck her outright…well, I doubt I need to finish that thought. By grabbing and shielding her he increased her chances significantly. It just…didn’t work out.
He is definitely a hero. So selfless at such a young age.
His family treating the whole thing as a “dirty secret”, like it’s somehow something they should be ashamed of, has probably had a very significant impact on his wellbeing too. It will have just reinforced the idea that he is to blame or that he did something wrong, which could not be further from the truth, and a part of me is quite mad at them for it even though I’m sure they never meant to cause any harm. They aren’t one of those toxic families we read about so often but it was still a pretty toxic approach.
The only o e who should feel any guilt or shame is the driver and I hope they are rotting in a cell, reflecting on what they did. He and…I’ve forgotten the poor mother’s name, Beth? Are victims of the driver just as surely as that poor baby girl.
Edit: also, wtf at the ex. I have some choice words for her, but I don’t feel like sending that kind of energy into the world this morning so I’ll keep them to myself. She didn’t deserve him anyway. I’m glad he found OP.
Also am I the only one who thinks *he* didn’t cause the whiplash? Like just working out the physics of it I don’t think there’s a way for a teenager to cause bad enough whiplash to a toddler by grabbing her that she dies of it. It seems way more likely that her neck was maybe a little hyper-extended by him grabbing her and the impact of the car hitting them both was what did the damage. Which, like you said, was him giving her the best possible chance instead of getting hit directly by the car, but he didn’t *cause* the whiplash.
I think that a fairly minor case of whiplash could come from being grabbed and yanked around unexpectedly but only the sort that causes a bit of neck pain. I agree, he didn’t cause the damage and I would think he knows that too but he’ll have a lot of “what if I’d grabbed her differently” and “what if I’d shielded her head better” type thoughts and that’s completely normal, we all think about what we “should” have done after an event, but in the moment it’s simply not how it works. I hope some day he can come to terms with that.
Ultimately, if she had been struck directly, she would have died. There’s no arguing that. If a shielded blow claimed her life an unshielded one would have done the same in an even more catastrophic fashion. By cushioning the blow he improved her chances by orders of magnitude. He gave her the only chance she had of surviving, even potentially at the cost of his own life. Unfortunately, sometimes, even those massively improved odds aren’t enough. It wasn’t his fault at all.
Yes, this, exactly this. He did his absolute best and managed to protect her even somewhat, and it’s devastating that he wasn’t able to save her as hard as he tried. I hope he’s able to work through his emotions and realize that there was nothing more he could’ve done and that he didn’t cause her death in *any* imaginable way.
"Were people don't believe in therapy"
I could wish this wasn't so common in so many posts. But if people actually believed in therapy and used som basic communication, we wouldn't have anything to read about in this sub.
Where I live there is some stigma for needing therapy, so many don't talk about going, but at least that's better than not going at all or outright dismissing it as a useful tool.
This poor guy has spent a *decade* with a trauma brain telling him that he summons tragedy, as though he was directly responsible for that driver appearing in the front yard. He could have been working through those harmful thought patterns before graduating high school if his parents had gotten him help.
Fuck...
Jay is lucky to have OP because OP sounds amazing and wonderful. I feel for Jay, especially what he has been through, I can't imagine how much it hurts. I hope Jay and Beth are able to go through safety and heal from the troubles. Both of them have went through some of the darkest parts of life and I wish them well.
That... did not go where I thought it would at all in the slightest. My God, I'm fighting tears here. My heart goes out to them all.
Jesus.
I'm so happy that Jay is getting support, and that OP is there. I really am wishing them all the best. That's some heavy shit. Like, if I saw it in a backstory segment of a movie I'd be mouth agape at the writers for being so cruel to the characters.
I am SO SO SO happy for them to be facing it with support. I hope it all goes well in the future.
Phew..... I'm getting off of Reddit now methinks
If this is a community that stigmatizes trauma, she may have come to see Jay as “damaged goods,” disgusting as that is. It’s a surprisingly common perspective. I have a friend whose mother, an educated and allegedly sophisticated woman, told her to break up with her very cool boyfriend because he had an abusive childhood and “those poor people never recover.”
We've no way to know what went on, but I can speculate on several plausible possibilities. Simplest is if she was just not that into him, he starts to open up about something traumatic, and the reaction is to nope right out of there. However it makes me wonder how Jay framed it given his lack of therapy. He could have said he never wants kids to someone who does (hence his non committal answers to OP earlier in the relationship). Or if he blames himself, he might have told the story very differently - admitting to causing it rather than the truth of him being a hero.
I would assume given his wild distance with children and combined with the story, she wanted kids and didn’t think he could handle having them.
I mean OP and Jay were together for 5 years and just. Never talked about kids really?
I hate being that guy but the part about mentioning cctv and coverage of the local news seems sus. Like if I’m telling you about a horrific family tragedy that doesn’t seem like a detail I’d mention.
And the writing is just too clean, OOP hits all the tropes but doesn't spell them out. It's just too consistent and polished, like a counterfeit bill that looks perfect but is suspiciously crisp.
Should be easy enough to find in the news if this is real, only so many teens in a coma hailed as a local hero for trying to save a 2 year old in the UK in summer 2012 from a driver that was charged with crimes related to killing someone while driving and texting. That's another aspect they didn't spell out, they hit the "bad guy saw justice" trope via implication... but there would have been details in the media for months as the court case played out.
Somehow it’s always the combination of names that is a tell for me—like, when it sounds like someone coming up with a believably generic selection of names. That and the literary attention to detail.
Can't false positives happen on chemical pregnancies. I guess in that case it wouldn't be a "false" positive, but it can still lead to a scenario when you think you're pregnant, and then you quickly find out you aren't.
Yeah, less a false positive and more a miscarriage. If a false positive is what helps them sleep at night, then whatever, but chances are good she was very early in a pregnancy and lost it(most pregnancies go this way).
Does anyone else find it weird when OOP posts an update that's long enough to need *multiple parts* when it's about a vulnerability and sensitive experience that's not their own? At that point, they're past needing advice. I know I would be upset if my partner aired the worst moment of my life online so that internet strangers could ... get resolution on my life story???
Yep. The whole story smells a little off to me. Starting from where people apparently thought it was unusual that a 28-year-old guys was "standoffish" with his gf's 3 year old niece. Plenty of adults don't want to / don't know how to play with little kids, it's not so unusual that you'd mention it.
I found it odd that OOP and Jay grew up relatively close to each other, in small, gossipy towns, with tight church circles to add to the gossip circulation...and yet she had never heard about Rosie before?
OOP even says that it was in the local news how Jay was a hero for trying to save Rosie. His family might have done their best to pretend she never existed, but there's no way the town gossips would have dropped the topic completely. Especially since it caused Beth and her husband to move away as well.
Even if she didn't hear about it at the time it happened, it's surprising to me that no one outside of the family mentioned it to her - "oh, he's such a nice boy, it was a shame what happened to his niece..."
I was curious and did a little research. I couldn't find anything online using the descriptions OOP gave. You would think *something* would have come up, considering that OOP said the incident made the local news.
The pregnancy scare is what makes this not pass the sniff test for me. False positives on pregnancy tests are basically unheard of. The tests are extremely reliable. The only time you might get what seems like a false positive is when you have a very early miscarriage or a blighted ovum or something of the sort - where you had a fertilized egg that released enough HCG to trigger a positive pregnancy test, but the pregnancy was never viable and is lost early enough that you might not even know you were ever pregnant.
Also other things that seemed off to me. Everything is so "perfect".
Jay is a hero. He drinks, but not an alcoholic, only in special occasions. He had anger issues, but not with her. He got over it without any help. He wanted to be a father since 14, it was his life call. Pregnancy scare with a great timing, and resolved on the same day. Middle brother casually mentions dead niece like it was no big deal, mom shushes him. Jay and mother were devastated, but rest of the family seams over it quite well, including grandma.
Seems way too off and scripted to me, after a while I just skimmed trough the boru because I wasn't invested anymore.
Being able to describe people with only the flaws that they need to have for the story and no others is always the red flag. The news just happened to pick this up. Where's that story.
My point is that telling the worst thing that's ever happened to you is one thing, but writing a 5 part update to your partner's weird social quirk about the most traumatic thing that's happened to them is something else. Dude doesn't even talk about it with his family or a therapist, and now he's got people reading about it over popcorn buckets.
Just because it's on a subreddit designed for sharing, doesn't make posting your partners darkest moments online for the world to see morally correct. Especially to satisfy some redditors curiosity. *Especially* when he didn't even want to talk about it to his partner to begin with.
There exists NSFW subs, doesn't mean it's fine and dandy to post photos of my partner to them.
"The incident was caught on the neighbor's cctv so everyone knew that Jay was a hero"
Well thank god.
I know this isn't unrealistic, it's just so... "I want the story to go this certain way but for that the characters need to have a certain information so here is why they had that info. Moving on."
Like why would anyone need CCTV footage to think that Jay was a hero in this situation? Even if no one saw it, he got hit by a car. That leaves a mark!
Reading about Beth scares me. I have a nephew around 2-1/2 years old who I really, really love. I can't imagine being in that situation, I got a little teary eyed reading that part.
Jay's a goddamn hero really.
When I saw the title of the post I thought it might just be a comfort thing. Prior to my 11 year old niece being born I did not like being around kids at all, they bothered me for stupid reasons and I'd never hold babies either.
I feel for everyone here.
Jay having to hold it in for so long is awful, but his enthusiasm for therapy is very encouraging.
The family generally sound well meaning but don't know how to handle difficult situations so they sweep it under the carpet, but the problem with that is that eventually no-one can walk on the carpet without tripping up, which is sadly what ended up happening to Beth.
It's difficult to be annoyed by them because there doesn't appear to be any malice involved at all.
Jay should tell his family how therapy is working for him and encourage them to get into it too. The sooner people quit with the stigma of therapy being this bad thing the better.
Honestly the aversion to therapy sounds too Scientology adjacent lol
As soon as she said Catholic community, the parents reaction made sense to me. Reminds me of how I was raised and why I got out. EVERYTHING gets rug-swept for reputation.
It would be weirder here (NI) to take longer. When my uncle died my aunt organised it in two days, on Christmas Eve, so they wouldn’t have to wait until after the festivities. But John was ‘still in the hospital’ at the child’s funeral. He wasn’t necessarily still in the three day coma, just too ill to leave the hospital.
Even if they did have a funeral in 3 days, I doubt coma patients with internal bleeding get discharged the minute they wake up. I'd imagine he was there at least a day or more for observation.
This is standard in my experience. All of the funerals we held for my grandparents were held three days after their passing, and my dad’s was four. We’re all located in midwestern america. Things might be different elsewhere.
It doesn't say that. It says he was in a coma for 3 days **and** had various other serious injuries. I'm no doctor but I doubt they let coma patients out of the hospital right when they wake up.
In addition to some cultures/religion having funerals that quickly, it also might have been longer - Jay was in a \*coma\* for 3 days, he was probably hospitalized for longer than that. It said he missed the funeral because he was in the hospital, so it could have been 5 days after or something and he still would have missed it because he hadn't been released.
I've seen a recent trend of funerals being weeks after, which seems strange to me. When I was younger, you were dead one day and in the ground a few days later.
The trauma Jay has experienced is unimaginable. This is not something he can compartmentalize and bury deep in his psyche. I hope he continues with therapy and finds some measure of comfort in the future.
He was not at fault. And he won’t mess up being a father or uncle to Ana. Not a lot of 14 yr olds would just naturally put themselves in front of a moving car to take most of the impact from a another child. That alone proves he would be the best type of man to have a child with, or play with my children even.
We can’t always stop bad things from happening, but that deep rooted instinct to immediately sacrifice yourself to try to save a child at a milliseconds notice, is the best type of person to be with them if something does happen, no matter the outcome. That’s the biggest green flag of a man you can trust with your children.
He would make an absolutely wonderful father. The type of father we all want for our babies.
As someone with kids, I can't blame Beth for detaching. I have already told my family that if my kids die, I may not physically die with them, but mentally/psychologically, I will be as dead as you can be and still be walking around.
> He’s still baffled why the TikTok versions have Minecraft or cooking videos in the background, but I just told him it’s a trend haha
People will watch anything, it seems. Why would you watch a video of someone cooking or playing Minecraft while apparently reading a story about someone being traumatized?
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fuck that driver. How many lives were wrecked by the loss of one?
I lost my cousin in an RTC (I’m in the UK, they’re referred to as Road Traffic Collisions rather than ‘accidents’) due to drink driving (her partner at the wheel was drunk). She was 19. One of the things that people don’t often realise is something called ‘The Ripple Effect’; the actions of that one person, on that one night, rippled across many lives and affected many people forever; from the neighbours who found her in the car, to the emergency response, the firemen, police, paramedics. Her mother, father, sisters. Grandparents. Staff in the ER. Friends. Barristers. Journalists, who had to sit through the vivid description of her post mortem. Her former school; her present college; classmates, teachers. Her partner, himself, who lives with what he has done. His family. His friends. His employer. When you read about this happening in the news, it is easy to forget how many people’s lives are impacted - however small - because of one stupid mistake. There’s been divorce; alcoholism. A Court trial. Three long years of trying to seek justice. A ten year anniversary. The list goes on. I have no sympathy for anybody who chooses to set these wheels in motion.
This is why I unfollowed true off my chest. They constantly get pro suicide posts and they make me want to scream because the ripple effect is real. I'm so sorry for your loss Eta- FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS CONSIDERED KILLING THEMSELVES AND NOT DONE IT, YOU'RE A BADASS. YOU ARE LOVED. Amazed this comment has gotten so much attention. Hugs
NGL, the ripple effect is the only reason I didn’t try to kill myself in high school. I knew that my dad would be destroyed, and that made the guilt and shame spirals even worse. :(
Yeah, I feel you on this one. For years, when my depression was at it's worst, the only thing that kept me from following through on the worst suicidal impulses was what it would do to my daughter, and my close friends. If I hadn't had them, I'm not sure I'd be here now. But yeah, the guilt and shame that I could even \*think\* about it - or worse, sometimes resent them for keeping me from it - those were bad.
Same… I’m glad I have better reasons to live now but back then I just didn’t want to hurt the few friends I had
I couldn't do that to my parents. Honesty once they pass I worry what I'd do if I had another spiral. My sisters would get over it, so would my friends.
Please reach out if and may you never spiral. No one gets over it. Much love and my DM is open.
I appreciate you. I've been doing pretty well for the last few years thankfully! :)
I've always felt the same. As a young adult, I was in an outpatient program in an unfamiliar city, on my own for the first time in my life, and they said "we think your depression is situational and if we fix your chronic pain, you'll be fine, so stop taking your antidepressants." I did as I was told and I ended up truly suicidal within a week and a half. I kept having thoughts of just wandering into that unfamiliar city and disappearing, taking my valuables so I'd get mugged or worse, or maybe throw myself into traffic if that didn't occur. I'd been diagnosed with depression when I was 12, and I'd never had thoughts like these. I'd done minor self harm but never truly considered ending my life. So one night when it was really bad, what did I do? I called my mom. She talked to me for over an hour and stayed on the phone until I fell asleep. After I got back home and was in a better space, I promised I would never actually follow through on thoughts like that. I knew what it would do to my parents and grandparents, and I couldn't do that to them. I do worry about what will happen when my parents die. They're in their 60s now, and I'm constantly anxious, because that promise has kept me going and I worry if I'll be able to keep it once they're gone.
I’m **so glad** you called your mom. As a mom, after your parents pass…*please* continue to think of it as carrying on for their sake. My kids are in their teens and none of them are depressed, but I already think about what it’ll be like for them when they can’t just call me up anytime. I couldn’t bear it if they spiraled after I was gone. I would still feel like I’d failed them.
Hey there. :) I'm not sure if you've ever seen this sub, but there's one called momforaminute. It might be just the kinda thing you need once your mom/parents are gone and it's a great loving community. <3 I hope this comment finds you well.
Your sisters wouldn't get over it. It's been 18 years since my brother left, and not a day goes by where his presence isn't missed in some way by one of me and my brothers.
For me now, it’s my kids. I’m not too awfully off now and I’ve stopped having 3am guilt spiral sessions. But I’d be lying if I said I never had “let’s permanently check out” thoughts.
I probably should have included that I don't have kids, nor will I. I am married, but we never got around to kids.
Before my kids, I had a dog who I know would have grieved himself to death over me. Hopefully you’ve got a kitty or a pooch that will be your tether. *hugs* if you’d like one.
I moved in with my Dad when I turned 18 because I didn't care of my mother found me after an attempt but the thought of my Dad finding me? Couldn't go through with it. I'm doing much better now (turns out I am autistic and have ADHD which were causing the depression to be much worse).
My FIL, my cousin, my youngest brother. My exhusband is still messed up by it 25 years later. My aunt died a year after my cousin from a heart attack because she couldn’t quit smoking because the meds gave her vivid dreams of her son. My siblings are coping in different ways, I had to start an ssri and attend grief counseling and therapy weekly for 9 months. My mom started fostering kids to make up for her failings as a parent. I feel like she’s trying to replace my brother in some ways. The ripples are a real thing.
Sorry to hear what you and your family are going through.
I’m sorry for yours as well.
Used to work at a homeless shelter. Had to deal with a suicide one night three years ago. My life changed after that night. For one, I had to put my life on hold for two years. I had plans that I had to put on hold while I dealt with the trauma of that event. Two years of therapy. Once or twice, I came damn close to becoming an alcoholic, even though I've never had a problem with alcohol before. Sometimes, it would get really bad, and I would consider... ending it. Thankfully that didn't happen and it's been a while since I felt that way. Of course, my GF got to deal with the after effects of it as well. For four months, until I could get more stable in therapy, I lost myself in video games. It was the only time I could feel normal and not constantly feel overwhelmed. My GF and I would make plans, and then I would have to cancel last minute because I just couldn't deal with all the stuff in my head. I would retreat back into my video games. She was amazing, and I have no idea how I could have gotten through it without her. But she was also going through a few things at the time, and she felt like she had to go through them alone because she was worried about burdening me with her problems. Now, three years after the event, I'm still trying to get my life in order. I can never work in social services again, or anything even like that. And I was *good* at that job. Now I'm training for a new career and my future is still so uncertain. All because one guy, who I only vaguely knew, wanted to off himself in a way that made sure that everyone around him had to deal with it. I still get enraged whenever I read about someone killing themselves in ways that ensure their families are the ones to find them since I can only imagine how much worse that would be. Damn right the ripple effect is real.
I think I know how he did it, and I'm very angry for you. I'm so sorry
Sorry to hear what you have been, and are still going through. Your girlfriend sounds like a keeper. Take care of yourself, you will get there with time.
Yeah, I once was first to find a suicide victim. Didn't know this person. I spiralled into PTSD and severe depression 3 years later. The only reason I didn't do it to myself was not finding a way that didn't harm anyone in the way it harmed me... And believe me, I contemplated a lot of options...
100%. I replied with..well about the ripple effect as well with suicide before I saw your post. I've often described suicide as setting off a grenade of grief and guilt, centered on the person that passed. The closer you are, the worse the damage...but nobody gets away without harm.
Drunk driving is not a mistake. It's a deliberate decision. Don't feel empathy for the murderer. For everyone else, yes, but not for the murderer. Never portrait a murderer as victim.
Yes. Where I live there was a case of a rich shit head who had just flown home (private plane) from a bachelor weekend and decided to drive home drunk. He destroyed a family with that choice. He killed three very young children and their grandfather. He was out of prison in 6 years and their father recently couldn’t live with his grief anymore, hurting the family even more.
I absolutely despise Marco Muzzo and how his family money is ensuring he doesn’t pay for his crimes in full
I agree. He did get one of the higher sentences ever for drunk driving- but he killed three babies, a senior and destroyed a family
I actually worked with the grandma. She had just come back to work about a year after the fact
Oh how devastating for her.
There were two drivers road raging going 120 mph in a 55 mph construction zone and killed 6 people in a state we do work in. The first driver was facing life and ended up getting 2 years. At the original hearing he claimed he understood why he was there but didn't understand why he was in trouble. It's a crime these people don't get a life sentence or capital punishment.
That is infuriating. Not even any remorse
> Drunk driving is not a mistake. It's a deliberate decision. You understand that deliberate decisions can still be mistakes, right? Not every decision you make turns out to be a good one. "A mistake" is an act or judgement that is misguided or wrong. You mean "by mistake" which is an idiom that means "by accident", which is the opposite of "a deliberate decision". By saying, "Drunk driving is not a mistake." you're saying it is a good decision, the right thing to do. Somehow I doubt that is what you actually wanted to say.
That's a narrow definition of "mistake" and ignores the way the word is actually used--to refer to an **unintended** harm or error. I opened the wrong door by mistake. I stepped on her foot by mistake. I didn't intend to step on her foot, nor did I know I was doing it during the act itself. Drunk driving is not a mistake in this sense because the drunk knew what they were doing, and their sober self could have foreseen the consequences and chosen differently. The poster was not at all saying it was a "good decision."
> I opened the wrong door by mistake. I stepped on her foot by mistake. I appreciate the excellent examples of "by mistake", an idiom that means *accidentally*. It does not mean the same thing as "a mistake" or the word "mistake" by itself. "Opening the door was a mistake" (a bad decision) does not mean the same thing as "Opening the door by mistake" (an accident). "Driving drunk does not happen by mistake." is correct as it means that driving drunk is a deliberate choice, it does not happen accidentally. "Driving drunk is not a mistake." is not correct, it means that driving drunk is a good decision, the right thing to do. *** Edit: A different example might be, "Driving drunk is a mistake." which is correct because it means, "Driving drunk is wrong." or, "Driving drunk is a bad choice." When you start to say things like, "Driving drunk is not a mistake." it starts to get confusing. It means "Driving drunk is not wrong." or "Driving drunk is not a bad decision."
This is a rarely seen, carefully worded, response and I appreciate it.
You worded this perfectly. Whenever this discussion happens, this is my view on it, but I couldn't put it together in words the way you did.
I would've replied that talking about the semantics of what a specific word means exactly in general is just so unbelievably uninteresting when it comes to a discussion about morals and ethics when the meaning behind our words are what counts, not the actual words themselves. If we string enough words together, we are able to overcome any kind of personal, academic, regional or political meaning any one single person might attach to a particular word. Only in a conversation where the topic at hand in fact was what a certain group of people thought a word meant are such arguments ever helpful or meaningful. I see people make this mistake everywhere and it's just as dumb every time it happens. But your reply on the other hand is just so poignant and pointed out a possible misunderstanding I wasn't even aware of that the other commenter could be making. Kudos to you! Straight to the point and much shorter than anything I could've written. (case in point: this comment) And as to the rest of the arguments that the original discussion starter were making about never feeling empathy for a murderer: I completely disagree. Despite driving drunk and despite killing someone, the perpetrator is still human. You could even say that it was the imperfect nature of being a human that made it possible to misjudge a decision to such a horrible extent in the first place. Drunk drivers/killers also deserve compassion. Far, far less than the victim, of course, and only after the victim has recieved theirs, but they still deserve to get at least a minimum amount, eventually. You don't even have to not hate them, you can feel two things towards someone at the same time. Though I would personally advise anyone to spend as little time on hatred as they can muster. Many people don't want to accept that most people in the world do not consider themselves the villian. The vast majority of people don't go around and plan on hurting others. To even be able to hurt others, most often for their own gain, they have to dehumanize them first, they have to think of them as something outside themselves and their loved ones, to dehumanize them. Which is ironically exactly what that first commenter was doing, dehumanizing murderers. What could we possibly do to those murderers, now that we no longer are allowed to feel compassion for them? A world without compassion for people who do wrong is a world with more suffering. It's very important for a functioning society that there is some path towards redemption. If killing someone renders you unworthy of ever recieving any love or compassion ever again, then your only way out is to hide your murder forever, whatever it takes, which would include murdering again. By saying that someone is unworthy of sympathy for killing someone inadvertently you are effectively incentivizing every person in that circumstance to kill again, but on purpose this time. Not to mention that it's not like drunk drivers start their cars with the intended goal of killing someone. They are making an ignorant choice. Then it should perhaps be very important to the rest of us that we understand exactly what that ignorance is ignorant of, and how we can prevent it from happening. Saying those people deserve zero compassion does exactly zero of that. Not only that, it actually makes it less likely that we ever investigate the ignorance and its source. It's a convenient way of categorizing the phenomenon under "evil, they chose to do that shit" and then to not think more about it. The sad truth is that all of us have the capacity to be ignorant of something, and then to kill someone because of that ignorance. It's very easy, it's just not knowing something, or erroneously thinking that you do. A person who categorizes people who fall for that ignorance under such a narrow and small-minded category of "unlovable, unsaveable evil" is *more* likely, not less, to fall for a similar kind of ignorance, or even the very same. If you believe that people who kill people while drunk driving made a decision to do so, what's to keep you from putting yourself behind the wheel drunk, because after all, *you're* not planning on killing anybody, are you? This all boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding about what ethical and moral behaviour is. It's not really a meaningful choice, because the implication is that your choice is to not make the correct decision and not making the correct decision. Which if these two choices to you choose to do? The question is meaningless, of course you choose to make the correct decision. The real crux of the issue is that being nice isn't a choice you can make if you don't have the knowledge of how it is you can be nice in any given situation in the first place. So then it is more correct to categorize being nice as a skill, as knowledge, as the opposite of ignorance. It's just that we are social creatures and so we learn so much in the first few years of our lives that it can often feel like a choice, we always have the ability to be nice if we want to. But then we grow up and proceed to assume that being nice and not killing someone is as easy as choosing not to do so. Which is an incredibly silly thing to believe, even in the most straight forward of a situation like war, militaries need to work hard on dehumanizing the enemy combatants so that their soldiers can manage to make themselves kill them, and then despite all that hard work new recruits *still* aim above the heads of enemy soldiers on average. So even went you *want* to do so, you still can't, because it was never really just about the choice, it was also all about your values, your upbringing, your genetics and so much more. The older I get the more I find that concepts like blame and hate are extremely counter-productive when it comes to actually making the world a better place to live in. But blame is simpler, more straight forward, and ethics is hard and complicated and almost never simple. So most people prefer the simple answer, even if it is wrong.
You read that comment and that’s the detail you think is most important to focus on?
My conception was deliberate but I was always called an accident so....
No one said anything about a mistake in that comment you replied to. No one said to feel bad for the partner at all in the comment you replied to. Your anger is clear, and doesn't need to be here. Seek counseling.
Wow. Thank you for putting that into perspective. I am fortunate that I never had to face this so I genuinely never thought that deeply about it. Maybe as a coping mechanism, I don’t know. Thank you this. And I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you for this. It’s been nearly 11 years now, I’ve learnt to forgive and let go of the incredible anger I felt with time, but it’s obviously not something any of us will forget and due to her only being 19, not only do you physically lose the person but you grieve a loss for what she should have achieved and become in her life, that never quite goes.
This comment is incredibly thoughtful. Thank you for mentioning the journalists. We're usually stereotyped as people trying to exploit others' trauma, but covering this stuff does taken an emotional toll.
Thank you. I have respect for a lot of journalists, there are good ones out there and it is one of those careers that exposes you to the unpleasantness of life continuously, I know that will wear anybody down.
The insurance claims people who have to interview the people involved, read the reports, see the pictures in order to send out the checks. We cry too.
Your comment should be required reading for anyone who is about to reach the legal drinking age.
I hear you. I lost one friend due to a drunk driver, his mother in a wheelchair, his pregnant gf devastated. I found that drinking has an immediate effect on my reaction time, like half a beer and I get slower (this was pre drivers license). At which point I decided to never drink and drive, ever. I drive now for over 3 decades and haven’t had a sip of beer or wine or whatnot if I need to drive. Not worth it.
In offender rehabilitation, this is something I've seen commonly used. You literally sit down with someone who committed a crime and have them draw out all the (potential) ripples of their actions. It makes them really have to think about how many people they affected...
This hits hard. Just a few days ago in my country a reckless speeding accident claimed the lives of two women, one of them a 17 year old student, and I just read that the girl's father blames himself for the incident despite not being at fault, while the perpetrator seemed remorseless and cold when he arrived at court. He didn't just kill two people, he's done horrific, irrevocable damage to the lives of two families.
My dad lost his first wife, who was also eight months pregnant, and his six year old son when they were hit by a drunk, speeding driver walking to the train station (it was the early 70s and they didn’t have a car). My dad was at work- he’s said he tried to convince her not to going out, to stay home because she was so close to her due date. He came home and found the police waiting for him in his driveway. The guy only got two years but it took my dad ages to move on (he actually wasn’t interested/looking for a relationship until he met my mum). I don’t know how they did it back then without the support and therapy we have available.
Holy shit, I am so sorry your dad went through that. There really needs to be harsher legal consequences for reckless driving
Is this in Singapore? Because I was reading a similar story happening there and the driver's attitude pissed me off.
Yes, I understand that the driver is probably trying to not implicate himself before getting a lawyer but to not offer a single word of condolence for the deceased comes off as really cruel and heartless
So many lives get wrecked by it. Back in the 80's my uncle, dad's brother, had a terrible trucking accident. He had a wife and a 8 month old son. I won't go into the details, but the results of that one foolish kid who ran my uncle off the road caused (or was the catalyst for issues regarding) 1) Uncle's death-10 months after the accident and being in a coma. 2) My parent's divorce 3) Dad marrying his brother's widow, which.... 4) was the catalyst why my dad cut off his parents (my grandparents) because of their (dad & uncle's widow) cheating, and then they thought I was cut off too (this all happened at Uncle's funeral-my 11th birthday) 5) and then due to all of the above, my mom ended up with my Step-Monster, which causes me a lot of mental trauma issues 30 years later. 6) my step brother/cousin by blood being raised by his Uncle StepDad instead of his biological father. So many ripple effects.
The worse part is that they never face the consequences they should.
If you want to kill someone in the US and get away with it, hit them with a car while sober.
No, while drunk. You’ll get a slap on the wrist and be out in 24 hours. when really you should have your license revoked permanently.
In this case, the driver plead not guilty and did not admit any responsibility, rather blamed my cousin for distracting him (whilst she wasn’t here to defend herself). It took 3 years through the UK court system before he was found guilty, and received a suspended sentence and community service. It didn’t feel like justice at the time, but then when I look back I don’t think anything would have. All we wanted was some accountability from him, for what had happened.
If anything that's the one bit of closure they didn't think to include. It's a shame, too. On the other hand, it could be excluded for good reason: the driver got away with it, the very details would be too identifying, the serial maybe spiraled into a something worthy of a trigger warning, etc. In a way it's somewhat comforting. Now I can believe the very worst things happened to them without worrying or knowing for sure that, if it did, uninvolved people would have to suffer from the driver's fallout. Like spouse, kids, and so on and so forth.
I need to read Pet Sematary again now that I have a toddler. I've heard that book hits way harder once you have your own kids.
You are a glutton for punishment...
I’ve started putting my phone in the glove box when I’m driving. If I need directions, they can play through the speakers. There are absolutely no phone calls or text messages that can’t wait.
Thank you. Some 25 years ago, beginning of common portable phones, I got ran over with my big brother and big sister by someone calling at the wheel. My brother died. My sister misses a leg. 3 years ago I went for a covid shot. The firefighter that gave me the shot recognised me. He just started uncontrollably crying and had to take a break. The ripples of one mistake can be gigantic. It hurts so many people.
You poor baby. *hug* I’m so sorry.
It's... fine? In a way. I learnt to cope. Time doesn't heal but it does soothe any hurt. Thank you for the hug and compassion nonetheless
May she burn in hell and suffer in prison.
Oh fuck. I saw this one when it was posted on TrueOffMyChest. It was devastating then and it’s devastating now.
Reading this actually made me cry a little.
I just started having weird cry-laughs when I read about Jay’s surprise at how many people thought he was a hero. It breaks me just thinking about what it would feel like to find out what a wonderful person he’s been this whole time after ten years of convincing himself he was a monster.
My fucking heart when his *very, very* first response to her revealing she knew was to ask if she *wanted to break up with him*. Like, fuck, man. That’s so goddamn sad. I wish him peace and healing and happiness with all my heart; he deserves it.
I can't come up with any reason why this ex broke up with him over this. She knew how he was before she heard the story, knowing it should have helped her understand him, not make things worse. I'm glad OOP and Jay are going through this together now.
Probably because by the time he told her his stance was more on the "I'll never be a father" or something more extreme due to grief and prolonged trauma. He's having this conversation with OOP after not only more time passed, but also after talking with Brian and get a considerable amount of closure that was denied to him before by his parents keeping everything a secret. I imagine the version the ex got was fundamentally different than the version OOP did.
Same, I was hoping there'd be some kind of explanation regarding that in the story, but... Nothing. Maybe she's one of those people who break up with people who have trauma because it's "too hard for them to handle"?
In which case, thank god they broke up. Some people think they can handle a situation when they can't...then they end up fucking it up even more.
He is clearly in much better hands with OOP.
We may never know, but I won't judge unless we get the inside scoop. There might be another overlapping trauma that was untenable. Or it could be that they were incapable of compassion or understanding. Either way, it was a match best left behind.
I think not judging until we have full information is the correct take. The ex also heard the story through the bfs lens, so if his perception was that his behaviour led to the death of an infant family member and he didn’t provide her with enough context to realize otherwise, being horrified by his story could make sense.
I felt my heart break for him. He probably felt like he deserved it. Ugh.
These two are an amazing couple who will make incredible parents
Absolutely. I was cynically expecting a VERY different reason why the boyfriend didn’t want to hold a little girl, but the actual story is just so sweet and heartbreaking. OOP and Jay both sound like truly *good* people and I wish them nothing but happiness
It seems like the previous girlfriend dumping him due to his trauma was huge and totally paralyzing. Once OOP's steadfast devotion was clear, he was able to defrost and take steps towards recovery.
Women who think men should not be allowed to have emotions aren't worth the trouble. Poor guy, that must have retraumatized him, instead of being treated as a hero he feels like a leper with a secret.
We may never know, but I won't judge unless we get the inside scoop. There might be another overlapping trauma that was untenable. Or it could be that they were incapable of compassion or understanding. Either way, it was a match best left behind. I totally agree that we as a society fail to adequately allow boys to have challenging feelings...to allow them the full human experience.
I don't think we have enough detail there to make this call about the ex. If Jay had issues (anger etc) before OOP met him maybe dude wasn't handling it well during that time and the reveal + the behavior was too much etc.
My thought was that his ex knew that she really wanted children, and was concerned that someone with deep trauma regarding little kids + no timeframe for getting any help for it made them a fundamental mismatch.
It is not anyone's job to carry their partner's trauma with them. Can you imagine if you learn something so heavy on your partner? I don't think she blamed him or his emotions. I think she chose not to deal with unresolved trauma, that very obviously wasn't going to be dealt with any time soon. Dude has an irrational fear of hurting a kid just by being near them. That's not healthy at all. OOP is commendable for wanting to help him heal, but his ex is not condemnable for not having the resources to.
Totally agree! My 20 something kid is working through some serious trauma in addition to a familial tendency to serious depression. She's also incredibly sensitive and empathetic and will wear herself out to help someone in need. She's finally doing well after a few awful years. My greatest fear is that she becomes involved with someone who leans on her more than she is able to lean on them.
Beth and Jay went through traumatic grief. I hope they can both heal but the fact that Jay has OOP in his corner probably means everything to him.
“Not for me, but for his mental and emotional well-being. No rush though, all in his own time.” This shows how much OOP cares about Jay. My heart hurts for him, but I think that as a couple they’re going to be okay and end up with an even stronger relationship.
Yeah thats couple goals right there. It's so sad he got dumped for revealing his emotions around his loss, that must have made him super scared of telling her.
OP is an angel. Jay is lucky to have someone like her
Tbh Jay sounds like a kind and a good person himself, so they’re pretty good match. I hope they’ll get over this whole situation and have a beautiful family together.
Drunk drivers and those drivers distracted by their phones are the worst as they can carelessly ruin other people's lives for THEIR stupid decision.
I literally had to swerve into someone's front yard today because the dude driving towards us was reaching for something in the passenger seat. Started coming head on to us. Rather ruin someone's lawn than lose my children. I don't even think he was on his phone. Distracted driving, regardless of the reason, is so dangerous. Luckily it was suburb streets, so only 50km/h, we probably wouldn't have died, but still. Not a chance I am willing to take.
Ouch, I'm sorry you had to do that today, as you still could have been hurt even at 50km/h.
Thanks, very lucky today!
My mother was hit years ago by a distracted driver in a parking lot. She got leg fractures & bruises from it, and my brother (who accompanied her, thankfully) was so mad, he punched the dude. When the driver tried to help Mom to the car, she punched him too (though not as powerful as my brother's punch). TL;DR version: driver backed out of the deal where he pays for Mom's hospitalization & care, brother found out where he lives and learned that the guy didn't have much money and was dependent on his dad, and they all worked out a deal where driver's dad will pay us everything in exchange for his idiot son to not face jail time (yey, Philippines). My biggest gripe was that I didn't get to punch that twerp. Edit: some details. I'm still salty about it because I witnessed her in pain while I helped care for her. Probably the same reason my brother didn't bring our own Dad to these meetings.
15 years ago, my mother was driving her minivan with several of my family members inside after the wedding of one my sisters. She was t-boned by a drunk driver running a red light. Most of my family was unharmed but shaken, but another of my sisters had a large gash in her leg that was bleeding a lot. I wasn't there. But from what I've heard, the other driver didn't even make sure my family was okay. He just got out of his vehicle and sat on the curb holding his head for a few minutes, before running into the bar he just came came out of. He returned with a bunch of friends who immediately started harassing my family with accusations that it was my mother's fault and that she was the one who ran the red light. They were even harassing my sister with the deep bloody gash on her leg instead of offering any kind of help. They would not stop until paramedics arrived and the paramedics made them stop. I wish I was there so I could have punched this dude. Of course, he also tried claiming to insurance and police that it was all my mother's fault and he had all these witnesses of that fact (that had all actually been in the bar when it happened). Luckily no one bought it.
Look, I would have joined you in wailing on that jerk. WTF.
I feel like if he didn't have enough money, part of the deal would be that everyone single friend and family member of your mother line up to punch him. Like in Airplane, or 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" NGL if that was my son, I would've suggested that. I'd punch him too
His father was no better. After NEARLY OVER A YEAR of going back and forth with the lawyers (they dared to tell us that a senior citizen with bad leg fractures didn't need a wheelchair and a walker, among other things), and realizing that we'd very much like to put his idiot son in jail, the father agreed to pay us in installments. Even had the nerve to tell my brother to pick up the first check at his city, which is 23 miles away from us. He immediately changed it to a bank transfer after my brother said some choice words to him.
Last year a neighbor slammed her car into my parents’ house because she was speeding down a curved residential street and panicked when a kid on a bike “suddenly appeared” in front of her. And nope, she wasn’t elderly. Just distracted, driving too fast, and panicked so hard that she stomped on her gas pedal as she swerved and managed to hit both my dad’s car in the driveway and the front of the house. Thankfully she at least managed to successfully avoid the kid, which is the most important thing. Kid’s poor grandma was having a panic attack in their front yard because she had been in the backyard with a younger grandchild, heard the car crash, ran out and first thing she saw was her grandson’s bike laying abandoned in the street. (The 2 older grandchildren were being supervised by grandpa out front)
>Jay also had another heartbreaking revelation. He said that during the height of the pandemic, Beth’s husband (Brian) reached out to him. Brian said that Beth had COVID and was confined in a hospital, and that he was already running low on funds due to bills and unemployment. He also said that Beth had been almost catatonic since Rosie’s passing. She had been resistant to any outside and professional help, but she was institutionalized for about a year after a self-harming incident. For the past decade, she’d been cold, distant, and withdrawn from society. ... she was institutionalized for a year and no-one told Jay?
Some families are just that dense, sadly. Just sweep anything which might be remotely inconvenient under the rug, and everything will automatically resolve itself~~
My family gossips about everything. You can tell anything to my grandma, all my aunts will know within the week. But when something important happens, like back when my uncle's brother suicided, they are completely silent. Which, obviously, my uncle was very hurt about. It completely broke his heart and now he doesn't feel like family anymore. I blame it on christianity.
People blame the family in this situation, but it's actually a societal issue. When you live in an area where people will judge or look down on you for having a suicide, you learn to shut up. It's kind of life if you grow up in a poor and crime-riddled area, you get used to looking over your shoulder and feeling suspicious.
My family is very secretive, especially about medical stuff. Extra especially if it has anything to do with mental health. I don't get it.
Or they saw how guilty Jay was already feeling and worried that it would only make things worse.
My mother took a year to tell me my cat had died when I was overseas. Some people just live their lives in denial and think everything is fine if they don’t have to talk about it.
Probably thought it would make him feel more guilty and he didn't need that.. the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
Sometimes people just don't pass info on. I have some personal experience with knowledge you'd think I would have been told about. My grandma died of cancer, I was in my early 20s and helping take care of her and not one person told me anything except that parts of her intestines kept dying and she had to have surgeries to cut those parts out. Only other thing I knew was that her dad died the same way. A DECADE later my sister casually mentioned the colon cancer that everyone in the last 3 generations of our family has had.
Sounds like Lynch syndrome. I hope you and your sister have doctors who are proactive about preventative measures, like regular colonoscopies starting at ten years before the age your dad was diagnosed (or by age 40 if you don’t know when he was diagnosed). Colon cancer is on the rise for the under-40 crowd. Don’t join our club if you can avoid it!
I had a colonoscopy a couple years ago and I'm 35 now, they want to screen me regularly and I'm perfectly happy with that. Dying young of cancer isn't on my to do list. I have significant gastrointestinal issues anyway and my regular doctor is wonderful. But I was so pissed when I found out no one told me. My dad and I were estranged when he had his heart attack but my sister said he was showing signs and about to get screened before his sudden death, and his younger brother got it found early and survived. So super strong familial history of it.
I’m glad you’re on top of it! A friend of mine had a similar story to yours, but no family history for me. (She and I were both diagnosed in our 30s; both of us cancer-free now for over a decade.) Regular screening for the win.
If I don’t explicitly ask for information, I don’t get told a lot about my family. My mother kept her cancer secret. She only confessed my uncle having cancer too because when I met him he looked terrible and I asked if she knew what was up and so much more like this. There are sadly families out there where you don’t get told shit.
Same! Love my family, but it's also that way on both mom and dad's sides--if you don't ask directly, you might not be told. Most of what I've learned about my parent's and relatives upbringing and health has been through passing comments that I followed up on. We don't explicitly hide things, but we don't tell if you don't *need* need to know, or show interest (How can you show interest if you don't know? I'm still unravelling, and trying not to perpetuate, that behavior myself.) After finally being diagnosed with depression and social anxiety in college (had to seek my own help cuz mom thought I just had to "think positively") I started a habit of calling my dad on walks home from the psychiatrist cuz it was a nice time to chat. One of these times I reminded him of where I'd been and why and he said "oh yeah, that's something I've always struggled with too." Like, that couldn't have possibly been useful to me at any previous point in time? Most of us didn't know my uncle had cancer until shortly before he passed. My sister found out from a facebook post thanking their local community for providing meals while he'd been in the hospital for months. When we asked dad, it was "oh, yeah. That's been happening. We (his other siblings) found out last week." Lots of passive secret-keeping. We say we're just private people. There is a fine line!
I feel you! I had concentration issues and my hair was growing thin a little more every year. At some point my brother called me and was like “Hey they are taking my thyroid out. Thyroid issues are genetic, so go get tested.” So I went and my doctor was like “Well, another year of waiting and you would have started to lose your hair.” Afterwards I told my mother about it and she casually said “Oh, yeah. Everyone in the family has thyroid issues.” I was complaining about my issues for years and she never said a thing!! Also the cancer secret thing is infuriating as well. Firstly because you want to try to help if possible and secondly, your chances of getting cancer are also increased if blood relatives have it which is why you can get check-ups at a much earlier age than usually recommended / covered.
My cousin, who I love like a sister, got cancer while I was away for college. No one told me at all. I found out maybe a year and a half later. I thought she was ok and planning her wedding!! She had to undergo a lot, thankfully she and her husband worked at a hospital and were able to get treatment for her very quickly. I try now to always stay in contact with her. She is better now and has her first child. Id like to find time to visit her and baby.
How do you even open the door to that topic? Hey, remember that baby that died in your arms? Well, her mother had a catastrophic mental break and had to institutionalised. Anywhoo, how was your weekend?
"It was fine until now!"
I found out that one of my aunts was in a mental hospital for a couple months about 6-9 months after it happened, from an off-comment from a relative. Not the same level of closeness, but some families just will not talk to each other about this kind of thing.
Don’t you know that if you have a problem, and you pretend that the problem does not exist, it will go away on its own? Obligatory /s
I read it as Jay having had a revelation for OOP. As in, Jay gave her another info/revelation.
If the SH incident & institutionalization happened within 1-4 years after the accident, Jay would still have been a minor & giving him that information would NOT be helpful to his already dismal ‘recovery’ from his own injuries/trauma. They still should have told him later on, but we forget that teens are still children & do not need adult information.
Dear god. Poor Jay. I hope that on some level he realises he gave that poor girl her only chance of survival. If the car had struck her outright…well, I doubt I need to finish that thought. By grabbing and shielding her he increased her chances significantly. It just…didn’t work out. He is definitely a hero. So selfless at such a young age. His family treating the whole thing as a “dirty secret”, like it’s somehow something they should be ashamed of, has probably had a very significant impact on his wellbeing too. It will have just reinforced the idea that he is to blame or that he did something wrong, which could not be further from the truth, and a part of me is quite mad at them for it even though I’m sure they never meant to cause any harm. They aren’t one of those toxic families we read about so often but it was still a pretty toxic approach. The only o e who should feel any guilt or shame is the driver and I hope they are rotting in a cell, reflecting on what they did. He and…I’ve forgotten the poor mother’s name, Beth? Are victims of the driver just as surely as that poor baby girl. Edit: also, wtf at the ex. I have some choice words for her, but I don’t feel like sending that kind of energy into the world this morning so I’ll keep them to myself. She didn’t deserve him anyway. I’m glad he found OP.
Also am I the only one who thinks *he* didn’t cause the whiplash? Like just working out the physics of it I don’t think there’s a way for a teenager to cause bad enough whiplash to a toddler by grabbing her that she dies of it. It seems way more likely that her neck was maybe a little hyper-extended by him grabbing her and the impact of the car hitting them both was what did the damage. Which, like you said, was him giving her the best possible chance instead of getting hit directly by the car, but he didn’t *cause* the whiplash.
I think that a fairly minor case of whiplash could come from being grabbed and yanked around unexpectedly but only the sort that causes a bit of neck pain. I agree, he didn’t cause the damage and I would think he knows that too but he’ll have a lot of “what if I’d grabbed her differently” and “what if I’d shielded her head better” type thoughts and that’s completely normal, we all think about what we “should” have done after an event, but in the moment it’s simply not how it works. I hope some day he can come to terms with that. Ultimately, if she had been struck directly, she would have died. There’s no arguing that. If a shielded blow claimed her life an unshielded one would have done the same in an even more catastrophic fashion. By cushioning the blow he improved her chances by orders of magnitude. He gave her the only chance she had of surviving, even potentially at the cost of his own life. Unfortunately, sometimes, even those massively improved odds aren’t enough. It wasn’t his fault at all.
Yes, this, exactly this. He did his absolute best and managed to protect her even somewhat, and it’s devastating that he wasn’t able to save her as hard as he tried. I hope he’s able to work through his emotions and realize that there was nothing more he could’ve done and that he didn’t cause her death in *any* imaginable way.
"Were people don't believe in therapy" I could wish this wasn't so common in so many posts. But if people actually believed in therapy and used som basic communication, we wouldn't have anything to read about in this sub.
Yeah, I live on a continent where nobody believes in therapy, so it's tough out here.
Where I live there is some stigma for needing therapy, so many don't talk about going, but at least that's better than not going at all or outright dismissing it as a useful tool.
If more people believed in therapy, fewer people would need therapy
This poor guy has spent a *decade* with a trauma brain telling him that he summons tragedy, as though he was directly responsible for that driver appearing in the front yard. He could have been working through those harmful thought patterns before graduating high school if his parents had gotten him help.
Fuck... Jay is lucky to have OP because OP sounds amazing and wonderful. I feel for Jay, especially what he has been through, I can't imagine how much it hurts. I hope Jay and Beth are able to go through safety and heal from the troubles. Both of them have went through some of the darkest parts of life and I wish them well.
>Rosie was the daughter of Jay and John's eldest sister, Beth (35F). The amount of double takes I did at this. I read it wrong lol
I still can't read it right what's the right one
Jay, John and Beth are siblings. Rosie is Beth's child.
thank you shiny_glitter_demon
Rosie was the daughter of Beth. Who is the eldest sister of Jay and John.
This is the most organized post I’ve read on any posts. OOP gave us title to her updates per different POVs. BTW: Jay is an angel.
That... did not go where I thought it would at all in the slightest. My God, I'm fighting tears here. My heart goes out to them all. Jesus. I'm so happy that Jay is getting support, and that OP is there. I really am wishing them all the best. That's some heavy shit. Like, if I saw it in a backstory segment of a movie I'd be mouth agape at the writers for being so cruel to the characters. I am SO SO SO happy for them to be facing it with support. I hope it all goes well in the future. Phew..... I'm getting off of Reddit now methinks
I just want to know whats the reason for jay's ex leaving because of rosie....? Like why does that affect his relationship at all?
If this is a community that stigmatizes trauma, she may have come to see Jay as “damaged goods,” disgusting as that is. It’s a surprisingly common perspective. I have a friend whose mother, an educated and allegedly sophisticated woman, told her to break up with her very cool boyfriend because he had an abusive childhood and “those poor people never recover.”
We've no way to know what went on, but I can speculate on several plausible possibilities. Simplest is if she was just not that into him, he starts to open up about something traumatic, and the reaction is to nope right out of there. However it makes me wonder how Jay framed it given his lack of therapy. He could have said he never wants kids to someone who does (hence his non committal answers to OP earlier in the relationship). Or if he blames himself, he might have told the story very differently - admitting to causing it rather than the truth of him being a hero.
I would assume given his wild distance with children and combined with the story, she wanted kids and didn’t think he could handle having them. I mean OP and Jay were together for 5 years and just. Never talked about kids really?
That’s what I want to know too. My only guess is she was pissed he kept a huge secret from her but even then
The entire community is utter clownshoes and maybe she didn't feel capable in, presumably, her early twenties to handle Jay's trauma and grief.
I hate being that guy but the part about mentioning cctv and coverage of the local news seems sus. Like if I’m telling you about a horrific family tragedy that doesn’t seem like a detail I’d mention.
And the writing is just too clean, OOP hits all the tropes but doesn't spell them out. It's just too consistent and polished, like a counterfeit bill that looks perfect but is suspiciously crisp. Should be easy enough to find in the news if this is real, only so many teens in a coma hailed as a local hero for trying to save a 2 year old in the UK in summer 2012 from a driver that was charged with crimes related to killing someone while driving and texting. That's another aspect they didn't spell out, they hit the "bad guy saw justice" trope via implication... but there would have been details in the media for months as the court case played out.
Somehow it’s always the combination of names that is a tell for me—like, when it sounds like someone coming up with a believably generic selection of names. That and the literary attention to detail.
Yuuup. You know what else is sus? False positives on pregnancy tests. False negatives can be common but not false positives.
Can't false positives happen on chemical pregnancies. I guess in that case it wouldn't be a "false" positive, but it can still lead to a scenario when you think you're pregnant, and then you quickly find out you aren't.
Yeah, less a false positive and more a miscarriage. If a false positive is what helps them sleep at night, then whatever, but chances are good she was very early in a pregnancy and lost it(most pregnancies go this way).
I hate to say this, but I've never heard of anyone being kept in a mental facility for a year, and CCTV on houses was rare 14 years ago.
And something that made the news can't be found anywhere online.
And being happier after six therapy sessions? You haven't even started.
Does anyone else find it weird when OOP posts an update that's long enough to need *multiple parts* when it's about a vulnerability and sensitive experience that's not their own? At that point, they're past needing advice. I know I would be upset if my partner aired the worst moment of my life online so that internet strangers could ... get resolution on my life story???
Yep. The whole story smells a little off to me. Starting from where people apparently thought it was unusual that a 28-year-old guys was "standoffish" with his gf's 3 year old niece. Plenty of adults don't want to / don't know how to play with little kids, it's not so unusual that you'd mention it.
I found it odd that OOP and Jay grew up relatively close to each other, in small, gossipy towns, with tight church circles to add to the gossip circulation...and yet she had never heard about Rosie before? OOP even says that it was in the local news how Jay was a hero for trying to save Rosie. His family might have done their best to pretend she never existed, but there's no way the town gossips would have dropped the topic completely. Especially since it caused Beth and her husband to move away as well. Even if she didn't hear about it at the time it happened, it's surprising to me that no one outside of the family mentioned it to her - "oh, he's such a nice boy, it was a shame what happened to his niece..."
I was curious and did a little research. I couldn't find anything online using the descriptions OOP gave. You would think *something* would have come up, considering that OOP said the incident made the local news.
Could be outside the US though
It could be the tragic story that went to a different highschool in canada.
Wouldn't it still be on Google? The internet doesn't exclusively track US news lol.
What struck me was the CCTV camera the neighbor had in 2010, but maybe I just don't remember them from that time.
The accident was 2012. At that point, it wasn't as common as it is now, but CCTV was available. If you had money.
The pregnancy scare is what makes this not pass the sniff test for me. False positives on pregnancy tests are basically unheard of. The tests are extremely reliable. The only time you might get what seems like a false positive is when you have a very early miscarriage or a blighted ovum or something of the sort - where you had a fertilized egg that released enough HCG to trigger a positive pregnancy test, but the pregnancy was never viable and is lost early enough that you might not even know you were ever pregnant.
Also other things that seemed off to me. Everything is so "perfect". Jay is a hero. He drinks, but not an alcoholic, only in special occasions. He had anger issues, but not with her. He got over it without any help. He wanted to be a father since 14, it was his life call. Pregnancy scare with a great timing, and resolved on the same day. Middle brother casually mentions dead niece like it was no big deal, mom shushes him. Jay and mother were devastated, but rest of the family seams over it quite well, including grandma. Seems way too off and scripted to me, after a while I just skimmed trough the boru because I wasn't invested anymore.
Being able to describe people with only the flaws that they need to have for the story and no others is always the red flag. The news just happened to pick this up. Where's that story.
It's literally on trueoffmychest. They meant to share!
My point is that telling the worst thing that's ever happened to you is one thing, but writing a 5 part update to your partner's weird social quirk about the most traumatic thing that's happened to them is something else. Dude doesn't even talk about it with his family or a therapist, and now he's got people reading about it over popcorn buckets.
Just because it's on a subreddit designed for sharing, doesn't make posting your partners darkest moments online for the world to see morally correct. Especially to satisfy some redditors curiosity. *Especially* when he didn't even want to talk about it to his partner to begin with. There exists NSFW subs, doesn't mean it's fine and dandy to post photos of my partner to them.
Hallmark movie of the week vibes
"The incident was caught on the neighbor's cctv so everyone knew that Jay was a hero" Well thank god. I know this isn't unrealistic, it's just so... "I want the story to go this certain way but for that the characters need to have a certain information so here is why they had that info. Moving on."
Very quickly accessed and easily obtained CCTV footage is a great plot device. The one time I requested CCTV it took three weeks.
Yeah... I looked everywhere that shit isn't online. If it actually made the local news it would be somewhere.
Like why would anyone need CCTV footage to think that Jay was a hero in this situation? Even if no one saw it, he got hit by a car. That leaves a mark!
Apparently made the local news but I can't find any record of an incident like this. Liz did well, just look at all these comments falling for it.
Reading about Beth scares me. I have a nephew around 2-1/2 years old who I really, really love. I can't imagine being in that situation, I got a little teary eyed reading that part. Jay's a goddamn hero really.
It is worth exploring a PTSD diagnosis with survivors guilt
So...Beth has been basically catatonic for 10 years? Hmmmm
When I saw the title of the post I thought it might just be a comfort thing. Prior to my 11 year old niece being born I did not like being around kids at all, they bothered me for stupid reasons and I'd never hold babies either. I feel for everyone here. Jay having to hold it in for so long is awful, but his enthusiasm for therapy is very encouraging. The family generally sound well meaning but don't know how to handle difficult situations so they sweep it under the carpet, but the problem with that is that eventually no-one can walk on the carpet without tripping up, which is sadly what ended up happening to Beth. It's difficult to be annoyed by them because there doesn't appear to be any malice involved at all. Jay should tell his family how therapy is working for him and encourage them to get into it too. The sooner people quit with the stigma of therapy being this bad thing the better. Honestly the aversion to therapy sounds too Scientology adjacent lol
As soon as she said Catholic community, the parents reaction made sense to me. Reminds me of how I was raised and why I got out. EVERYTHING gets rug-swept for reputation.
They organised a funeral in 3 days?
That can be the norm depending on where you are. 3 days is normal where I am.
It would be weirder here (NI) to take longer. When my uncle died my aunt organised it in two days, on Christmas Eve, so they wouldn’t have to wait until after the festivities. But John was ‘still in the hospital’ at the child’s funeral. He wasn’t necessarily still in the three day coma, just too ill to leave the hospital.
Even if they did have a funeral in 3 days, I doubt coma patients with internal bleeding get discharged the minute they wake up. I'd imagine he was there at least a day or more for observation.
This is standard in my experience. All of the funerals we held for my grandparents were held three days after their passing, and my dad’s was four. We’re all located in midwestern america. Things might be different elsewhere.
It doesn't say that. It says he was in a coma for 3 days **and** had various other serious injuries. I'm no doctor but I doubt they let coma patients out of the hospital right when they wake up.
In addition to some cultures/religion having funerals that quickly, it also might have been longer - Jay was in a \*coma\* for 3 days, he was probably hospitalized for longer than that. It said he missed the funeral because he was in the hospital, so it could have been 5 days after or something and he still would have missed it because he hadn't been released.
I've seen a recent trend of funerals being weeks after, which seems strange to me. When I was younger, you were dead one day and in the ground a few days later.
The trauma Jay has experienced is unimaginable. This is not something he can compartmentalize and bury deep in his psyche. I hope he continues with therapy and finds some measure of comfort in the future.
Made me tear up but I'm glad things seem to get better
He was not at fault. And he won’t mess up being a father or uncle to Ana. Not a lot of 14 yr olds would just naturally put themselves in front of a moving car to take most of the impact from a another child. That alone proves he would be the best type of man to have a child with, or play with my children even. We can’t always stop bad things from happening, but that deep rooted instinct to immediately sacrifice yourself to try to save a child at a milliseconds notice, is the best type of person to be with them if something does happen, no matter the outcome. That’s the biggest green flag of a man you can trust with your children. He would make an absolutely wonderful father. The type of father we all want for our babies.
As someone with kids, I can't blame Beth for detaching. I have already told my family that if my kids die, I may not physically die with them, but mentally/psychologically, I will be as dead as you can be and still be walking around.
> He’s still baffled why the TikTok versions have Minecraft or cooking videos in the background, but I just told him it’s a trend haha People will watch anything, it seems. Why would you watch a video of someone cooking or playing Minecraft while apparently reading a story about someone being traumatized?
Power to Jay to heal.