The Seed of Bad

I never believed in born bad people.

Until my daughter came along.

In preschool, when my grandma, who has low blood sugar, ate one of her gummy bears, she jammed a chopstick into her mouth.

In elementary school, after overhearing us complimenting the neighbor’s kid, she lured the three-year-old into the backyard and let the dog go after her.

In middle school, she bullied a classmate so badly that the girl jumped from the school’s roof, leaving her with a permanent spinal cord injury.

In high school, she snuck out for a date, and when her dad locked her in as punishment, she falsely accused him of sexual abuse.

My husband was then hounded online and ultimately took his own life.

But her response was, “I was just joking, I didn’t think he was so fragile.”

After her dad died, she tried to poison me to claim the inheritance, staging it as a suicide pact.

When they cremated my body, she told the staff to blow my ashes out of the smokestack.

"Mom always said she wanted to be free, so I shouldn't put her in some grave."

Now, I'm back, it's the winter break before my daughter’s senior year of high school.

She's threatening to jump off the roof because we won’t buy her a new tablet.

I rush over and grab her hand.

“Honey, we live on the fifth floor. You might not die, but you could end up disabled. Go over to the twenty-story apartment building across the street; that's a surefire way to end it.”

1.

My husband, Tom, and I both wanted kids.

We started trying even before we got married.

But it took three years before I got pregnant the first time.

We were so excited. Tom told me to quit my job and stay home to take care of myself and the baby.

I was so sick, my mother-in-law came to stay to help me.

Nothing stayed down, I was throwing up constantly, and I had to get IV fluids at the end.

When I felt the baby kick for the first time, around four months, my nights became restless.

The bigger I got, the more she seemed to move around, kicking me so hard I felt like she was going to pop out of my skin.

At eight months, she suddenly flipped into a breech position and was pushing on my heart.

I could barely breathe and had to have oxygen for the last two months.

It felt like those ten months were some kind of test of my resolve.

But when she was born, this tiny thing wrapped in a blanket and cradled in Tom’s arms, it felt like it was all worth it.

I had no idea it was just the start of my nightmare.

2.

I had a C-section. Once the anesthesia wore off, the pain was excruciating.

I was really sensitive to pain, and I would panic every time the nurses came in to reposition me or massage my stomach.

But my daughter, Sarah, started to cry whenever I put her down.

And it wasn’t enough to just hold her lying down. I had to be sitting up.

So I would sit propped against the headboard, holding her in my arms through the pain.

My mother-in-law, bless her heart, told me to let the baby cry for a bit.

When she took Sarah, the little terror st...