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r/AITA 

u/Creamcheesebagal 

AITA for staying as a firefighter after a major work accident?  

UPDATE 

Hey everyone! So, i know it's been a while since i gave you an update (five years!) and i wanted to give you all the final update  

But before that, i need to give you an updated family tree 

My pseudo mama and dad adopted me, so they’re now my mama and dad, and i have a little sister and brother, and an older brother, a brother in law, and friends who’re more like sisters to me, sometimes i call them my sisters, sometimes i call them my friends, depends on how much they’ve annoyed me /hj 

So, last time i updated i said i was going to forgive my “sister” (who I'll refer to as MB from now on) 

Well, like many of you predicted, that plan went to shit, but not in the way you’d expect 

She made a reddit post, about how her brother was dead, and my friend u/TeekKeek91 sent me the post, which i will forever be thankful for, and the post revealed that i wasn’t an oops baby like i originally thought, i was thoroughly planned, you see i had an older brother named Daniel, and he developed childhood leukaemia and none of them were a match, so they made one. Me. 

Safe to say i was shocked and distraught, and then angry, because not only did she lie to me my whole life, but she also stated that she didn’t have a second sibling. I made a post about it, and i made an update saying how i cut my bio family off at a dinner MB invited me too (all of these posts can be found on my profile, if you want to read them) 

After cutting them off my MB just... broke 

It was like something snapped in her mind, she just couldn’t let me go, she couldn’t leave me alone, and she started stalking me 

It started off slow at first, she would get her ex boyfriend (oh yeah, they broke up, I'll get to that later) to harass me into talking to her, she would get him to do her bidding (she hid an airtag in my old jeep, which i sold to my little sister, which was awkward and embarrassing) she also put an airtag on my motorbike that i bought after selling my sister the jeep 

She collected everything that she gave me after i threw it away, in her mind she was keeping it “safe” for me because E made me throw it away (i don’t think i need to clarify, but I'm going to anyway, this wasn’t the case, i threw away the things she gave me over the years/sold what i could because i didn’t want reminders of her) 

At this point we had a court date for her breaking HIPPA, and for the false paperwork, she only had to pay a fine, and her nursing credentials were revoked, this was the same judge that originally dealt with something I'll mention in a bit, so i can’t say I'm surprised that’s how the first court session for the stalking went actually 

My boyfriend proposed, i said yes, and we’re now married (with three beautiful children, more on that later) 

So, MB slowly started to lose her mind, she put cameras and microphones in my home, we then moved, and she put them in there too, and ended up moving onto our street 

She tried to kidnap my son from school, she tried to access my medical records, and she rang me from different numbers every day, she also made multiple alternate accounts to try and get into contact with me, it was sad and frustrating, i mean at this point i didn’t realise just how bad her mental health had gotten, if i knew i would’ve called adult social services to get her the help she needed, but i just didn’t know, i used to blame myself for not knowing, but therapy helped me realise that because i didn’t know, how would have i been able to help? 

She ended up getting fired from dispatch, it turned out she was using resources from work to keep tabs on me, and after she was fired it was confirmed that she hired a private investigator to find out everything about me 

As the months went on, and her stalking got worse (including putting our address on a sexually explicit sight) (we got it sorted, although I'm still unsure on why she did this, maybe to pin it on my husband, to try and “show me” that he “can’t protect me”, i don’t know) we were finally able to get a court date 

The first judge pretty much laughed me away, he couldn’t understand that women can hurt men, that women can also be abusive and stalkers, it was a slap to the face, he took one look at our evidence, looked at MB, and said “there’s no way that little lady did all this, I'm not granting you the restraining order, son, please stop wasting police time” 

It was humiliating and just frustrating, how can you see all this evidence and say “oh yeah, she didn’t do this lmao, you’re making it up to hurt this woman” honestly how that man is a judge, i don’t know  

The detective in charge of my case managed to get in touch with the district attorney and the judge was changed, and they ruled in my favour for the restraining order, and it was both comforting and upsetting 

Comforting, because I'd never have to deal with her again, but upsetting because it shouldn’t’ve had to come to this, but it did, but hey, it’s all over with, right? 

Wrong. 

After the case won in my favour and i was able to get the restraining order, my sister’s mental health started declining rapidly  

It was really hard to watch, i looked up to her a lot growing up, she helped me when i needed to leave Hershey, and to watch her slowly be consumed by her need to “take care” of me was just... heart breaking 

She just couldn’t cope, and it hurt to see 

Her stalking started to get worse, me and my son couldn’t leave the house most days because she would be there, waiting for us, and adult social services didn’t do anything, i honestly don’t know why, maybe they had too many cases? Or this wasn’t something they dealt with? I'm not familiar with adult social services so i honestly can’t say why 

I developed agoraphobia, i got panic attacks even thinking about leaving the house, not even therapy helped, and it started to affect my son, he could see that i was struggling to leave the house, that i couldn’t bring myself to even open the front door some days, it was hard  

But one day, i decided that if i didn’t get out of the house, i never would, and i wanted to show my son that even though i was scared, i could be brave 

So, i decided to go on a hike, because even though i still get chronic pain in my leg, i love hiking, it’s so freeing to me, the breeze in the air, the birds chirping, the sun beating down on my skin, it’s peaceful, it calms my mind when things get too much, and things were getting too much 

So, i packed my hiking bag, took my motorbike, and went to my favourite trail 

It was going well for the first hour, yeah my anxiety was high, but i was on call with my husband (well, fiance at the time) and it was good, but you know in the movies, when the main character is out in the woods and everything goes silent when something bad is going to happen, and you just get that sense of dread? 

Do you see where I'm going with this? 

Yeah, MB turned up, she didn’t look like she usually does 

MB usually kept herself clean, she would wear comfy clothes, but they looked smart, you know? Like she carried herself with an air of grace and decorum, well, this MB wasn’t the one i knew (I'm NOT judging, mental health sucks, trust me, i know, I would never judge someone for wearing dirty clothes and smelling bad due to their mental health, but i just need to describe how she looked, I'm so sorry if it offends you, i truly don’t mean it in a bad way, I'm trying to describe how bad her mental health got, trust me i would never judge anyone for this, i struggle to keep myself clean sometimes, i know how much energy it takes, honestly i wouldn’t even mention it if i didn’t think it was needed for the post) 

Her clothes were... full of holes and stained, her hair was a mess, it looked like she tried to cut it herself, her nails were bitten down to the nail bed, her eyes had sunken in, her eyes had eyebags so dark it looked like she had under eyeshadow and she just looked... unwell, it was so heartbreaking 

She started spewing nonsense, about how that “evil fiance” kept me from her, how he “paid everyone off” so he could “keep me to himself” it was honestly terrifying, she didn’t sound like herself 

I tried to calm her down, because even though i have a restraining order against her, I'm still a first responder, and she was clearly going through a mental crisis 

She wasn’t listening to me, she grabbed my arm and tried to drag me with her, saying that she had to get me somewhere safe before the “fake friends” come to take me away 

I was terrified  

This woman? This isn’t the woman that i grew up until she left for school, this isn’t the woman that got back into contact with me 

This is someone completely different 

And that was petrifying 

Honestly i completely forgot that my husband was on the phone, i was fighting off a panic attack and trying to keep MB from taking me to a secondary location 

She kept calling me Daniel, as well as Evan, it was like she couldn’t tell we were two different people, and that one of them was dead, i knew at that point that she was severely unwell, and i needed to get her help fast before she hurt herself or me 

As we got closer and closer to the car park, my panic attack got worse, i was begging her, pleading her, to let me go, that this was just a misunderstanding and we can work it out with my husband and everything will be okay 

I wish i never mentioned my husband's name 

She screamed at me, she screamed that it's all his fault, that he took me from her, and that only she can protect me, only she can love me, only she can keep me safe, she didn’t look fully there, like she was living in a dream, kind of like dissociating but not? I’m so sorry that I'm not describing this right, it’s just hard for me to remember this time, it happened so fast and so slow at the same time 

I tried so hard to calm her down, but she was erratic, she dug her nails into my arm, I'm so lucky she had bitten them off or she would’ve made me bleed 

She looked at me and told me that she was here to save me, she was here to protect me from my husband, she was fully convinced that he was hurting me (he wasn’t, i have an iron deficiency, the bruises are from everyday clumsiness, I'm over sit feet tall and i have chronic pain in my leg, I'm going to be clumsy, well i was clumsy before the chronic pain, bad sense of gravity) and she wouldn’t take no for an answer 

She stood still once she heard the police, she started to panic, because the “police were in on (husband’s name) schemes” and that they’ll “take me away again”  

That was when she pulled out the knife. 

I begged her to put it away, that maybe these were different police officers, but she wouldn’t listen, she was convinced that the entire LAPD was on my husbands “pay roll” and that they were going to kill us for trying to leave, she made him around like some kind of mob boss 

She then decided that we had to do it, we had to hurt ourselves so we could “be free from (husbands name) clutches” 

I begged, i begged for her to stop, but then she stabbed me, right in the lung 

I don’t remember much after that, so here’s what i was told  

MB was tased and she dropped to the ground, and they arrested her, i was taken to the hospital and i coded on the way there, twice, but as you know I'm okay (otherwise i wouldn’t be writing this post) and i was heavily medicated for a week 

The stab wound punctured my lung, but they were able to fix it, they had to remove a part of my lung, and i had to quit firefighting, but I'm okay 

My sister on the other hand... 

She was deemed not fit for trial, and she is now in a mental institute for the criminally insane, where she’s getting the help she needs for her mental health, last i heard about her, they had to sedate her because she tried to bite a nurses nose off, the nurse is okay thankfully, I'm hoping MB will make a full recovery, for those who don’t know, when you’re deemed criminally insane, you get taken to an institute were they help you recover 

Unfortunately, most of these places are notorious for just keeping people drugged up without helping them, I'm hoping MB is in a place where she’ll actually get the help she needs, and I'm not sure why but a lot of people believe these places aren’t like prison, they are, they’re a mental health Institute, as well as a prison, honestly the best way to describe it is as “pre-prison”  

You're there until you’re deemed fit for trial, it doesn’t go against the time on your sentence either, so not only would you be placed in an institute until you were deemed sane, but you would also have to face trial and do your sentence, and considering MB stabbed an ex-navy SEAL, the NCIS would be involved, and she would get a major sentence, but as i said, currently she’s in a mental health institute for the criminally insane and (hopefully) getting the help she needs 

Now onto the next part 

Her boyfriend 

So, as you know, her boyfriend was the head medic for our firehouse, and he was a bully to me pretty much from the start, didn’t believe i was smart, called me a himbo all the time, called me a child, a headache, laughed at me when i was SA’d by my original therapist (who was charged and sent to prison), well when i initially cut off MB, and he started harassing me at work to talk to her, our boss had him transferred, he was shocked that it wasn’t me that was transferred, but because it was him who was causing the issue, it was him that was transferred (just like if it was me causing the issue, it would’ve been me, the instigator is always the one transferred, i don’t know how he didn’t know that) 

When he was transferred he’d still try to get into contact with me, granted not as much as MB but yeah, but the thing is he would just encourage MB, i think he liked the fact that she was mentally unstable, because then he could “look after her” but this is just my theory, i genuinely don’t know 

Once i was awarded my restraining order, and MB backed off for a bit, i noticed him around a lot more too, i guess he was either stalking me in her place, or trying to intimidate me into forgetting about the restraining order, either way, it didn’t work 

Once MB was arrested and awaiting her evaluation, and i was back home healed, her boyfriend paid me a visit, it wasn’t good 

He was angry that i had her arrested, he was angry that i couldn’t do as i was told so he could keep her in his life, i don’t know, he was angry, he was shouting a lot and not making a lot of sense, and i tried to calm him down, it didn’t work, and so i tried to get him out of my house, thankfully my husband and son weren’t there, so my son couldn’t see someone who he saw as an uncle punch his second father 

Yeah, you read that right, he punched me, square in the face 

And the ring camera caught it all.  

I had to go back to the hospital because i was still recovering from major surgery, i got checked over and i was okay, i mean my orbital bone broke but other than that i was okay  

So, i pressed charges, and because the ring camera caught everything, he was charged with assault of a first responder and an ex-navy SEAL (i was still on payroll at this point, and because of my military past, he NCIS got involved) and he was sentenced to two years in prison for the assault of a first responder, and 10 years for the assault on a navy SEAL, doesn’t seem like a lot all things considered, but he was also fired from the LAFD for assaulting a coworker (even though we don’t work in the same station anymore, we still count as colleagues because we work for the same department, I'm not sure if i explained that right, sorry!)  

So yeah, he was fired, and last i heard about him he broke up with MB because he “couldn’t handle the family drama” even though he was quite happy feeding into it 

After all of this, i decided i didn’t want a big wedding, and thankfully neither did my husband, we asked my parents if we could use their back yard for a small wedding and they said yes, my mama authenticated the wedding, and my dad walked me down the aisle, at the wedding we just had a small group of friends and family each, it was beautiful, and a day I'll never forget, not just because i married the love of my life, but because my son asked me to adopt him, of course i said yes, and we filed the paperwork as soon as we could, and he was officially my son 

Now, i bet you’re wondering, hey, didn’t you mention three kids earlier? 

Well, I'm getting to that 

But first, our honeymoon  

We decided (I'm a lying liar who lied, my brother paid for it) to go to Hawaii, and it was stunning, honestly i didn't want to leave, i don’t get why my brother’s husband hates it, it’s a stunning country and everyone was so nice! We stayed for two weeks, and during those two weeks my brother hid my passport six times, because he didn’t want me to leave either (my husband thought this was hilarious, until he realised that if we didn’t leave, we would end up staying with my brother, and he’s terrified of him) 

Right, now onto the kids! 

So, my biological niece was taken by CPS when her dad was arrested, and they were asking family members if they could take her, well they started with me, and after me and my husband spoke about it, we said yes 

While they were waiting for us to answer, they spoke to my bioparents about her, who surprise surprise, wanted absolutely nothing to do with the “bastard child”, i guess they just love their appearances, huh? 

They asked my best friend, the boyfriend's brother, if he could look after her, but he said no because he wasn’t ready for children, which is absolutely valid, they never ended up asking the paternal grandparents because we said yes, we adopted her six months later, I'm proud to say she’s a happy, loving little girl, who’s obsessed with her dollhouse and loves her big brother, and he loves her too, even though she gets on his nerves sometimes, but what sibling doesn’t? 

Our third child was a safe haven baby 

If you’re unsure what a safe haven baby is, I'll tell you, so in California, most fire houses(I'm not sure if it's all of them) have temperature regulated boxes that the birther opens from the outside, places the baby in, and an alarm goes off in the station, it sounds different from the normal alarm, and a firefighter will go to the box, get the baby out, give them a medical exam, and then take the baby to the hospital 

It's all very legal, and safe 

Anyway 

While my husband was at work, they had a drop off, and my husband fell in love with her immediately, and one thing lead to another and we’ve adopted this little girl, so now we have three kids, and i couldn’t ask for anything better 

Do i wish i was still a firefighter? Yeah, of course i do, firefighting was my life but now i have a new passion 

Baking 

Yep, you read that right, baking 

I even opened a little bakery near my old fire house (i offer 50% off for first responders!) and it's the most fun I've had in a while, especially when my son gets involved, he mostly just taste tests things, but i wouldn’t change it for the world, my little brother even helps out, it’s his first job and he’s so proud of himself (he mostly runs the register, and serves tables on occasion but he loves it, and our mama isn’t worried about him because I'm there to make sure everything is okay)   

I love my bakery, i love my husband, i love my kids, and i love my family  

Honestly, I think the thing i love the most about my bakery, is that i can have it open during the day while the kids are at school/nursery, close it to go pick them up, then open again once i have them 

And with my husband’s schedule, it’s perfect, yes, my son still has his carer, she’s a godsend and just because I'm working less hours now doesn’t mean that we fired her 

When I'm working after I've picked the kids up from school/nursery, she keeps an eye on him/his siblings while i work, it’s a perfect 

The funny thing is (well, i find it funny) this whole thing started because MB couldn’t handle that i was a firefighter 

Well, she got her wish, I'm no longer a firefighter I'm a baker, and i love baking 

So, i guess in some sick and twisted way, i have my sister to thank for this, thank you, MB, for giving me my family, and for giving me a new passion in life 

I just wish you were sane enough to see it. 

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