I kept telling myself that things would be better, that when Alba got older, when she started daycare or play school, I would have more time to myself. That I could drop her off, sleep and then feel more normal. I then thought that I would speak to Omar that night about looking at options for schools. Perhaps getting Alba out of the house for a few hours a day was the antidote to everything.

I walked into a café, ordered a vanilla latte and let Alba run around. I got her a chocolate chip muffin and together we sat and ate it. I felt brittle, fragmented. Had I been too insensitive to Marina? And why did I doubt her lover? Was I secretly happy that Sumi had lost her child? Or was I relieved?

I startled myself when I thought that. I had become a monster. Was this what happened to women when they were sleep deprived? The mind becomes full of trickery. The mind unravelling, halved, quartered. I did not like who I had become, and at that very moment, I was filled with revulsion at everything. A husband, a child.

I looked at Alba and I saw a creature who had usurped my life, who now had control over everything. I had a life that was no longer mine. She took and only took from me. My sleep. My sanity. My youth. She, who drank from me like an endless ocean of milk. She, who rendered me like stone in a corner, watching her run towards the ornamental fountain, laughing to herself, speaking in her gibberish and the occasional word. In that moment, I wished I were a different person, somewhere else. In Barcelona, Paris, back in Montreal. I did not want to be in KL. I did not want anything. I just wanted to be alone. On a park bench somewhere.

I wondered how days turned into nights, and how time was dictated by naps, the changing of diapers, snacks, meal times, sleep, and then it starting all over again. Two years had passed, how many diapers had I used? How much poo had I cleaned? How much milk had she drunk from me? How many times had she been bathed? How many nights had I not slept right through?

I was being illogical, ridiculous, selfish, I had a child that I had given birth to, one who was healthy, perfect, I was perfectly able to care for her, I had a husband who loved us both, so why was I feeling the way I was? A fear washed over me, I suddenly felt incapable—that I had to see it all through—primary and secondary school, parent-teacher conferences, homework, swimming and piano classes, braces, pimples, crushes, teenage rebellion, tattoos, college, adulthood. Being a parent never stopped, there would be no breath in between, no time to recover, no time to salvage anything except sleep.