When Someone Finally Sees You

Chapter 3: The Past Still Echoes

The soft jingle of Cleo’s stuffed unicorn hitting the hallway floor brought Tahlia back to the present. She blinked, still seated at the edge of her bed. She had five minutes before she had to leave for work, but her thoughts had already taken her somewhere else.

Somewhere much further back.

She was six again, sitting on her knees on the scratchy carpet in the corner of her mum’s one-bedroom flat. The television was playing, but she wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch unless her mum was at work. Dianne worked long shifts—sometimes double shifts—leaving Tahlia alone with whoever was around.

The neighbor, Mr. Griggs, used to come by to “check on her.”

She remembered the smell of beer on his breath. His rough hand on her knee. The way her throat closed up so tight she couldn’t make a sound. She never told her mum. What would be the point? Dianne already worked too much. She was already too tired.

Then came the phone call the year after. Her father, Darren, had been found after taking too many pills in a dirty motel. He’d survived, somehow. She hadn’t seen him in years, and when he showed up again weeks later—thin and twitchy—he looked through her like she wasn’t even real.

Tahlia was seven the last time she saw him.

Everyone always said she was “so mature” for her age. “Such a little lady.” “An old soul.” But no one asked her why she never wanted to play outside. Why she watched adults the way other kids watched cartoons.

Because being a child had never felt safe.

And now here she was—39, a mother of four, partner to a man who didn't see the ghosts she carried—and something in her still ached for the childhood she never got.

Not the freedom. Not the wildness.

The innocence.

She wanted to be little again. But not in the way people thought. She wanted someone to make her feel safe enough to be little.

She slipped open the drawer beside her bed. Inside was a soft, unused pair of socks she’d bought on impulse at the dollar store—pink, with tiny cartoon bears stitched into the cuffs.

She ran her fingers over them and hesitated.

Then slowly, she slid them on.

And for a moment, just a breath of one, she imagined being five and loved and protected. No one needing her. No one demanding anything.

Just her.

She didn’t know where this journey would go. But today, she would go to work wearing bear socks under her boots.

And that was enough.