AN AFFAIR WITH SLEEP

I can't take this anymore. I need a divorce! Enough of your threats and troubles, how dare you usurp authority over me like I was a slave, giving me no opportunity to express my liberty. I must not remain under this parasitic relationship forever. I must find the hidden exit door or possibly create one today. This is just too much to handle!!

How can I spend half a dozen years of my life dancing to your tune just within a score age of my existence? I have as a faithful bride invested these years in total surrender and obedience to your headship, not minding personal desires and opinions, but it seems as though you're very ungrateful. You have proven to be insatiable and unthankful.

You daily entice and recklessly use me without considering my daily schedule and plans, paying less attention to my health conditions. Obviously you have shown that my happiness and emotions mean nothing to you. You only act to satisfy your selfish desires and bring pleasures to yourself. Even when you're not ready to take responsibilities, you still use me during my periods. Yes, my periods of productivity, not minding the possible outcomes.

I have never complained all these while, still, you had the guts to disgrace me publicly! Why must you force your dirty self on me in church when the pastor was preaching, causing me to nod carelessly at intervals like a happy lizard. Even the ushers noticed and asked me to stand up just to resist you. As though that was not enough, you still followed me inside the bus and deceived me with your romantic poems and the driver carried me two kilometers across my destination while I enjoyed.

How best can I describe your commitment in bringing disgrace and public assault to me at several occasions. The worst of it is that you disappear at the scenes, leaving me to bear the shame alone. No need playing scrabbles with you again trying to fix words. It's over! Wisdom is profitable to direct, I'm getting a divorce!

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I don't think I'm alone in such a relationship. It's intriguing to know that a young girl of barely 22 years has spent a minimum of 6 years asleep calculating with a standard seven hours a day sleeping affair, regardless of her days of unreserved commitment when sleep was her occupation as a child.

A simple subtraction of her years of sleep from her total age would leave this damsel with only 16 years of consciousness. The unfortunate thing is that these 16 years is often spent in ignorance in this side of my country. No wonder such ladies at their real age can only reason at the best like a sweet sixteen girl in the Western countries. Even my dear mom must have slept for over my age.

The simple analysis that caught my heart is; if a girl at 22 years can boast of 6 years of sleep, can she do same with her years of productivity? I mean, if perhaps she is among the few that invested six years of her life in productivity, what could be the name tag for the remaining 12 years of her life? 12? Can we say that her half-life is unaccounted for? Imagine.

It's high time we minimized our sleeping duration and consciously invest into reality. If we say that the 6 years in review is nonnegotiable and compulsory for sleep for healthy living, let's also believe that there could be a possible 6 years of compulsory productivity inside a 22 years lifetime. Let this mind be in you! This can at least reduce the queue for job interviews and increase that of job creation.