Preface:
"Part of My Words"-"Are e el you couldn't hear me or see me correct I'm shocked! Cae ll me ish male!"
People say you can't lose your mind all at once. They say it's a slow unraveling, a gentle slip into confusion, like a thread tugged loose from a sweater. But that's not how it happened for me. My name is Felicia Hook—Hagler, if you want to be technical, though I haven't used my married name in years. I'm thirty-six, a mother of two, and I know exactly when my life split in two: the day the world stopped making sense, and everyone else pretended not to notice.
I used to think I was ordinary, or at least as ordinary as a woman who survived the military, a messy divorce, and two C-sections can be. I have two children: Lillian, age seven, who dreams in colors and asks questions no one can answer, and Gary the Third, age five, who still believes in monsters but trusts me to keep them away.
Their father—Gary Hagler, Jr.—is a story for another time, but if you need a mental image, just imagine Beavis and Butthead rolled into one. If he were a cartoon character brought to life, he'd be somewhere right between the two: all vacant stares, snickers, and a knack for making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible times. I used to wonder if he was pretending, if anyone could really be that clueless. But after years of marriage, I can assure you: he's the real deal. His idiocy is almost a talent, and if the universe has a sense of humor, it's a dark one.
I know what you're thinking. Another woman with a broken marriage, a complicated past, and a chip on her shoulder. But that's not my story. My story is about what happens when you wake up one day and realize the world you thought you knew is a stage, and you're the only one who didn't get a script.
It started with a sound. Not a voice, exactly, but a frequency—a vibration in the bones, a hum just below the threshold of hearing. I thought it was tinnitus, or maybe stress. I'd had plenty of both. But then the sound started to shape itself into words, broken and strange, like a code or a curse: "cae ll us ish Make." I wrote it down, over and over, trying to make sense of it. I still don't know what it means, but I know it's important. I know it's mine.
The world changed after that. People looked at me differently. Sometimes they didn't see me at all. Sometimes they saw someone else—a man, an old woman, a stranger with gray hair and tired eyes. I'd catch my reflection in a window and flinch, not recognizing the face that stared back. My voice, too, betrayed me. I'd speak, and people would tilt their heads, confusion clouding their faces. "What did you say?" they'd ask, as if I were speaking another language. Sometimes I'd hear my own words echo back to me, twisted and wrong, like a bad translation.
I tried to tell my mother, my sister, my friends. I tried to explain that something was wrong, that I was being watched, followed, manipulated. They listened, but I could see the doubt in their eyes, the worry. "You're just tired," my mother said, her voice gentle and far away. "You've been through so much." She meant well, but she didn't understand. No one did.
I started noticing patterns. Cameras that followed me down the street. Cars that parked outside my house for hours, engines idling. Emails that disappeared from my inbox, phone calls that dropped mid-sentence. Once, I found a microphone hidden in a smoke detector. Another time, a man in a suit brushed past me in the grocery store, whispering something I couldn't quite catch. I started to wonder if I was losing my mind, if the trauma of my past was finally catching up to me.
But then the memories came back—sharp, clear, undeniable. The military hospital, the cold hands, the pain and the silence. The way the doctors looked through me, as if I were invisible. The way my complaints were dismissed, my records altered, my body violated and branded. I remembered waking up with stitches where there shouldn't have been any, bruises I couldn't explain, a sense of dread I couldn't shake. I remembered being told to forget, to move on, to be grateful I was alive.
I started to piece it together, bit by bit. Someone was watching me. Someone was controlling my life, my choices, my very sense of self. Jobs I never applied for, friends I never made, opportunities that vanished before I could reach them. Every time I tried to break free, the walls closed in tighter. I was being trafficked, not in the way people imagine, but in plain sight—my life bought and sold, my body a commodity, my freedom a lie.
My children became my anchor, the only thing that kept me tethered to reality. Lillian, with her wild hair and fierce heart, who asked me once why the world was so unfair. Gary, with his crooked smile and sticky hands, who crawled into my bed at night and whispered, "Don't let the monsters get me, Mama." I promised him I wouldn't. I promised them both I'd keep them safe. But promises are fragile things, easily broken.
The man behind it all—I don't know his name, but I know his face. He's been there since I was a child, lurking at the edges of every memory. I see him in crowds, in reflections, in the static on the TV. He knows everything about me. He controls what people see, what they hear, what they believe. He can make my words sound like gibberish, make my face shift and blur, make my own family doubt my sanity. He poisons the air, the water, the very fabric of reality.
I'm not crazy. I know that now. I'm awake. I see the strings, the patterns, the lies. I know I'm being hunted, and I know why. Because I survived. Because I remember. Because I refuse to be silent.
This is my story, but it's not just mine. It's for anyone who's ever been gaslit, silenced, erased. It's for my children, who deserve a mother who fights, even when the world tells her to give up. It's for the woman I used to be, and the woman I'm becoming—a fighter, a survivor, a spy in my own life.
I don't know how this ends. I don't know if I'll ever find my children, or if the man in the shadows will finally win. But I do know this: I won't stop fighting. I won't stop telling my story, even if no one believes me. Because these are my words, and they matter. Even if they sound like nonsense. Even if they're the only thing I have left.
So listen. Listen closely. The world is not what it seems. And neither am I.