THREE YEARS AGO

My cute lizard avatar froze. What used to be big and baby-like eyes was replaced with my look of horror. The lizard’s face was small, round, and green, the way only a lizard could pull off. Now my pale, round human face showed.

I was exposed.

My strawberry blond hair provided little contrast with my pale skin and gave me a ghostly appearance on the camera. My glasses reflected the light, hiding my blue eyes. My plump face obscured any possible natural omega beauty underneath.

For a split second, time stopped.

Then it rushed back in with a vengeance.

Chat erupted. Words tumbled together in a cascade of “gross” and “fat” interspersed with a flood of disappointed emojis and harsh expletives. I watched as the chat text kept moving, getting replaced by more and more hate.

The bile rose in my throat. My trembling hands hovered uselessly over the keyboard.

Weaponized waves of hate continued to emanate from the stream chat.

My eyes blurred the lines of text together and every harsh emoji seemed to sear itself into my brain.

Not this. Not Now.

My bedroom’s familiar comfort turned into something unrecognizable. It was suffocating. On the shelves lining my room’s walls, my collections of books, manga, and figurines seemed to mock me with their carefree whimsy. The trinkets on my desk, once a source of joy, felt like clutter.

My computer glowed colorful hues but all I saw was starkness. It felt like the hateful words from the chat spilled through the screen, drowning everything in its way.

“Cayden, what are you doing? Why do you look like that?” Her voice, a voice that should have been soothing and loving was sharp and unyielding, pierced through my spiraling panic, yanking me back to this harsh reality.

My scalp prickled.

I didn’t hear her come in.

“You look awful. Are you feeling sick? Do you need your medicine?” My mother moved closer to my side as I remained motionless. Her breath was uncomfortably close in my ear. I could feel her look change between the screen and me. Her eyes narrowed.

Her shadow swallowed the glow of the monitor.

“This is why I said you shouldn’t do this computer thing,” her tone dripped with irritation, each word a slow deliberate jab.

“You waste so much time on this nonsense.”

My throat tightened painfully. She always showed up at the worst moment, invading without permission, smothering without concern. But this – this was beyond what I could bear.

My entire following could see the disgrace behind their favorite content creator. I had worked hard to build how I was perceived. I knew only attractive people got followers. And I wasn’t anything like what they wanted me to be. What I wanted to be.

Without waiting for my reply, she reached for my desk, her fingers brushing over my carefully arranged trinkets and notes. She moved a coffee cup, then a pen. Objects clinked together as she meddled. She glanced at the paper, rolling her eyes, her touch turning to a dismissal of my efforts.

“I just don’t get it,” she muttered as she continued to rearrange my things. The objects scraped and rustled. The noise grated against me, each sound sinking in and puncturing what was left of my armor.

She always needed to control the narrative. To make me feel small and foolish – I just needed her to stop.

To leave me alone.

My body remained frozen while my eyes jerked back to the torrent of comments that continued to pour. Each line of text was another crushing wave against my chest. Even the comments that weren’t attacks felt harsh. 

The cruel words now attacked my age and mocked my mother’s intrusion, blasting her presence and my helplessness.

Each stripped away at my thin, dented shield.

I couldn’t tear myself away. I wanted to scream, to fight back, to do anything except just sit there. My mind echoed every jeer, every hateful word, until it was all I could think.

But my hands and mouth refused to move.

“What’s wrong now?” My mother snapped, putting her hands on her hips.

“You look even more terrible. Look what this does to you!” 

She was oblivious to her involvement. The camera controls on my stream deck were easy to reach, and somehow she had deactivated my avatar and turned on my camera.

I gained enough strength to reach for the keyboard. My fingers trembled again. The small motion took monumental effort. 

The cursor hovered over the “End Stream” button.

I clicked.

Silence fell – the kind that pressed in from all sides, deafening in its vacuum.

I had ended the stream.

But it wasn’t over.

The flood of notifications still came in unrelenting waves – unfollows, unsubscribes, and messages dripping with hate and accusations of deception. When would it stop?

“You scarred me for life,” one message said.

“Never again 😬, UNFOLLOWED!” another said.

I watched my follower count drop one by one. People who had loyally watched my streams for years now knew what I looked like.

I never wanted to show myself – not then, not now, and not ever again.