Behind the Mask of Light

There’s an old story I’ve been keeping; today I want to let it breathe.
A story of how I became consumed, madly addicted to satisfaction. Obsessed with achievement. With money. Not fame, not the shallow glitter of popularity, but with results that came fast and ruthless. I refused to rest, convinced that endless grinding would bring endless rewards. I was greedy; ravenous.

To keep up such performance, I had to become someone I was not.
I’m not an extrovert; I stumble in social spaces, clumsy at connection. Silence has always been my shelter. But 2023 twisted me into someone unrecognizable, an alter ego bursting with reckless energy. I forced myself to laugh too loud, scream too much, shine too brightly on livestreams. The truth? I am melancholic, fragile, moody to the bone. To keep the mask alive, I had to lose my mind every single day.

And what did it give me? Not wealth, not glory; only the taste of something poisonous dressed as power. At its height, five thousand ringgit in a week; not every week, but enough to convince me that madness was worth chasing. I can still see it; the cold numbers flashing on the screen as I withdrew RM800 in a single day. It felt unreal; like the world was warping beneath my hands, bending to feed my hunger.

But it was never the money that chained me; it was the drug hidden inside the chase. The surge; the violent flood of dopamine burning through my veins, tearing me open from the inside. It made me laugh louder; shine brighter; move as though I were untouchable. In truth, I was already crumbling. It was not triumph; it was delirium in disguise, a darkness that whispered sweetly while it hollowed me out.

Someone once said to me, “Sofie, you don’t love yourself; you allow people to use you.” Their words cut deep; sharper than they knew. I wanted to fight back, to deny it; yet in the silence of my own mind, I could not. They were right. I had handed myself away piece by piece; to strangers, to expectations, to shadows that fed on my need to be enough. I called it ambition; I called it sacrifice; but it was self-destruction disguised as love.

Behind this obsession, there was someone I called a brother. Not by blood, not by family, but by the role he played in my story. He was never truly mine, yet he carried the weight of that word in my heart; brother.

He was the mastermind behind my madness in live streaming, the spark that pushed me to chase harder, run faster, dream bigger. He wasn’t to blame for what I became, but he was the one who made me believe I could turn into something more than myself. With him, the hunger grew. With him, Kuala Lumpur began to breathe again inside me, the city I once held in silence suddenly felt alive.

He gave me the strength I thought I never had, the fire that fueled my alter ego. But that fire came with smoke; the exhaustion, the emptiness, the taste of a mask that no longer fit. He was the reason I could endure, and at the same time, the reason I began to break.

He was the hidden strength behind my madness, but even then, I began to feel the cracks. The exhaustion. The hollowness. I was tired of carrying an alter ego that weighed more than I could bear; tired of wearing a shield that was supposed to protect me but only left me bleeding inside.

Because every obsession has its price. To chase what I wanted, I had to endure bullies, manipulators, toxic voices that chewed at my spirit. And so I built my armor higher, thicker, convincing myself that the louder I laughed, the less they would see me break.

How did I build this armor, so high and so thick?
How did I keep the laughter alive; the kind that looked so effortless on screen; while inside I was breaking? How did I manage to make people believe I was always entertaining; always full of light?

The truth is bitter. Dopamine stimulation became my only weapon; my daily ritual; my silent addiction. I drowned myself in cup after cup of coffee. Every time I went live, there was always a cup in my hand; and if not coffee, then an energy drink laced with caffeine. And when caffeine was not enough, I reached for nicotine; smoke filling my lungs; my veins tricked into believing I could carry on. Each day I needed more; each day the hunger grew more violent. Sleep became my enemy; I could not rest because even off screen, I felt chained to others; forced to carry the mask of joy while my body begged for mercy.

I came home and collapsed into editing; racing against time as if the clock itself was chasing me. When I stopped; when I dared to pause; the guilt devoured me. The performance dropped; and with it, my sense of worth. It was brutal. I could feel regret boiling inside me; punishing me for something that was never right to begin with. And yet, I pressed on. I laughed harder; smiled brighter; pushed myself deeper into the illusion of happiness on screen. Behind it, my body paid the price. Headaches tore through me; my muscles ached as if they no longer belonged to me. Still, I reached for painkillers; swallowing them down so I could keep shining; keep screaming; keep living a performance that was killing me in silence.

For more than six months, this was my life; an endless cycle of coffee, nicotine, energy drinks, and painkillers; a prison disguised as purpose. And the cruelest part was this; I knew what I was doing; yet I could not stop.

In the end, my body became the battlefield; every cup of coffee, every energy drink, every sleepless night carved its scars inside me. I laughed on screen; I screamed with energy; yet when the lights went dark, I collapsed into silence. My liver carried the weight of my sins; a liver burdened by neglect; a body trembling beneath the mask I forced it to wear.

And then it came; the fall I could no longer outrun. My body began to betray me; the same body I forced to smile; to glow; to dance under the cruel light of a camera. It started with exhaustion that no sleep could fix; then the sharp ache in my side; a fire burning beneath my ribs. The doctors called it damage; I called it punishment. A liver burdened by neglect; a heart crushed by its own devotion to illusions.

The caffeine no longer worked; nicotine no longer soothed; even the painkillers began to lose their mercy. I was left trembling; weak; unable to keep up the performance. The streams that once gave me a rush now mocked me; every laugh I had once staged echoed back like a ghost; hollow and cruel.

I still remember it clearly; while in the hospital, I never told the doctors how many painkillers I had swallowed. Even nicotine became a secret; a quiet confession I kept to myself. I only revealed it to the cutest psychologist I met after I began having blood problems and waves of discomfort that I could no longer ignore. It was luck, I suppose; a fragile thread of fortune, that I met her after a year of feeling completely empty; a year in which I had lost all spirit for the brother; for the alter ego; for the version of myself I had carried relentlessly on live streams.

I was also constantly afraid of losing the people who always watched me on live streams; afraid of losing everything I had built. The fear of losing viewers; of losing engagement; haunted me like a shadow that never left. The effects of dopamine stimulation dug deep; they made me sink into low moods; trapping me in the past; forced me to revisit old wounds that had never fully healed. 

I asked myself why I had loved dopamine stimulation so fiercely. The answer came quietly, but sharply; because I was FOMO; paralyzed by fear of missing out; trapped in a world where stopping for even a second felt like losing everything. Every laugh I faked; every rush I chased; every cup of coffee; every puff of nicotine; every sleepless night; it was all driven by a terror that if I paused, the world; the moment; my life; would slip away and leave me behind.

 There is so much more to unpack; so many layers of pain and obsession; but for now, perhaps it is enough to leave it here; a pause in the story; a breath in the chaos that once consumed me.