"Why Are You Not Sleeping?" - by Quareeb Jagun

It is 1:47 AM.The room is dark. The fan is having a tough time pushing the warm air. Outside, your neighbour's generator is humming its usual midnight song.And you? You are on your phone. Not just looking at your phone. You are living inside it. You are browsing on Facebook with a level of concentration and commitment that you never used for a school assignment. You are reading memory posts from people you haven't seen since JSS3.For the fourth time, you're watching a video of a cat falling off a plastic chair because, for some reason, it's still funny. You're in your element. You're in your comfort zone.You're free. However, you are not free.Exactly two meters away from you, on the other side of this same room, your parent is sleeping.Or at least, that is what you told yourself. The Art of Midnight SurvivalYou turn down the brightness. The light from the screen has been spilling a soft, incriminating blue light across the ceiling. You've seen your parent move position twice in the past 20 minutes. You're not taking chances. Your volume? Zero. You have even turned off the vibration because that one time the notification buzz sounded like an earthquake in the silence of 2 AM, making your dad sit up and shout, "Ehn?! Who is that?!" You almost left your body that night.Right now, you are operating with the precision of a trained Mi6 operative.You are reading a @TwoCents post someone shared.A heated football argument is happening. Banter is flying. You are typing a reply that is definitely going to cause a crisis by morning. And then, The bed creaks.The sound.The movement.Your body goes completely cold.Your thumb that has been scrolling with Olympic-level speed for the past hour freezes completely over the screen. You do not breathe.You do not move. You become a sleeping statue. The most convincing sleeping statue in the history of human performance.You close your eyes slowly, the way people close their eyes in movies when they are pretending to be dead—not suddenly, not guiltily, but peacefully. Innocently. Like someone who has been sleeping since 9:30 PM and doesn't even know what a smartphone is. With one smooth, practiced motion, you flip the phone face down on the mattress.You have done this many times before. The Interrogation"Why are you not sleeping?"The voice comes from across the room. Calm. Knowing. The voice of someone who was never actually asleep.You feel your soul exit your body through the top of your head."I am sleeping, Ma, you say," from the position of someone who is clearly not sleeping.Silence."Mmm."That "mmm" carries thirty years of parenting experience. It contains a university degree in detecting lies. It knows exactly what you were doing and exactly how long you have been doing it, and is simply deciding whether tonight is the night to seize your phone or to save the energy.Tonight, thank God, mercy wins."Sleep. You will wake up tired tomorrow. Early to bed, early to rise.""Yes, sir" or "Yes ma" with the absolute sincerity of a criminal who has just been saved from a very serious situation. The Resumption You do not pick up the phone for four full minutes.You count the seconds.You wait.You listen to the breathing on the other side of the room and slowly fall back into a sleep rhythm. And then Carefully. Slowly. You slide your hand under the pillow. With the caution of someone defusing something.The screen brightness is still zero. You are navigating the screen purely by memory and muscle.The group chat has moved on without you; there are 50 new messages. Someone said something ridiculous. Someone replied with something worse. The chaos is beautiful.You drop your banter. You are back in the game. Then, at 2:14 AM, your babe calls.It’s a video call, but neither of you speaks. This is the international protocol of Gen Z lovers living with Nigerian parents. You pick up, position the phone three inches from your face, and mouth the words, "Goodnight, my love."They whisper back from their own dark room, running their own midnight operation: Goodnight. I miss you. You both stay on the call for 15 minutes doing nothing except occasionally saying "Mm" or "Are you there?" because the silence together is better than the silence alone.Eventually, one of you falls asleep first.The other watches for a moment.Smile like a fool and hang up. The ReckoningYour alarm is screaming. You are supposed to be out of the house by 8:00 AM. Your eyes feel like someone poured sand inside them. Your parent is already awake, already dressed, moving through the morning with the energy of someone who went to sleep at a reasonable hour. They look at you.You look at them."Did you sleep well?" they ask."Yes," you say."Mm," they say.That mm again.You both know. Neither of you says anything else. This is the unspoken arrangement. This is the silent treaty between a parent who loves you and a young person who is simply, helplessly, a product of this generation. If you have ever lived this exact night—and I know you have, drop your experience below.What were you actually doing at 1 AM? Group chat? Babe? Movies? TikTok rabbit hole? Confess. This is a safe space. 😂 Oh, and if you enjoyed the vibe, don't forget to leave a tip to keep my midnight data alive!

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