Karen’s Journal: ‘It was the first time I’d seen my dad cry’ – tales from the life of one of the women we support

Karen – a familiar face here at The New Futures Project – started keeping a diary late last year – having agreed to share it with us, our supporters and the wider community.

Karen – not her real name – is in her early-40s and in poor health, chiefly as a result of drug and alcohol use.

She loves dropping into the project to catch up with friends and is a keen and valued volunteer here too.

Here, with typical candour, she looks back at a number of pivotal points in her life.

So, I’m going to give you a brief look into my life, just a quick rundown so you can get an idea of how I came to Leicester, how I got mixed up with drugs and alcohol and so on, she writes.

I had a very privileged upbringing, so to speak.  Lived in a four-bedroom house with a double garage in a tiny village.

It was me, Mum, Dad, one sister (older) and one brother (younger), so I was the middle child.

I went to church on Sundays. My dad drove a Rolls Royce. We would travel all over the world.

My mama is from Alabama and I didn’t know until my teens that I had two sisters and a brother living there, but we’ll get to that.

I did youth work in my teens and I do often dream how my life could have been – but I wouldn’t change it as I wouldn’t have my daughter.

I started smoking fags at 12 years old, drinking at 15, then hash or weed at 16. I moved out two weeks after my 16th birthday into a hostel, a young people’s project and that’s where the Es and speed started.

But then something happened that changed my life – I was raped by a woman. But, yet again, that’s another story.

At 17, my family took a holiday to the USA. One week at Disney World, Universal Studios, the second week in Alabama to meet the family.

I remember the first thing my grandma said to me and my brother was: “Hey y’all it’s so great to meet y’all. Why don’t you go and play in the back yard with your cousins – they’re playing with the shotguns!”

My dad almost fainted.

I decided I wanted to live there, so in January 1998 I moved to Alabama. I was a very naive 17-year-old. Looking back, it was a silly idea.

It was great at the time. I lived in a trailer with my sister and two nieces and my nephew for a month. It was so redneck or hillbilly – but it was fun. 

After six months of being bounced between aunties, cousins and sisters, I moved back to the UK.

My mates had all started taking Es, MDMA, magic mushrooms a few times and acid too, again, a few times.

Wow, the adventures I had.

It was when I was 19 that I tried heroin for the first time – and it was the stupidest thing I ever did.

I started calling myself a ‘functioning addict’. I had a job. I was a Corgi -registered gas fitter and worked for a guy for 10 years as a caravan engineer.

We were a mobile business doing services and repairs in the summer and working for the traveller community in the winter. I absolutely loved it.

The guy who owned it was retiring and was leaving the business to me. I arranged a week off work and, with help from my mum and dad, did a cold turkey rattle so I could start afresh.

My fiancée, who I’d been with for eight years, did the same and five days in I got a call from my boss’s wife to tell me he’d had a heart attack and died and that she’d sold the van, the tools…all of it.

So, all of a sudden I had nothing.

So, I started shoplifting or selling drugs to fund my habit and, in the next year, I’d get caught, arrested and taken to court and bailed.

At one point I was given 500 hours of community service. I did eight hours and that was enough for me, so I breached and got arrested and was sent to prison for 12 weeks.

HMP Peterborough. It wasn’t like I’d imagined. Butlins but minus the swimming pool.

I had a great time, but my best mate who I’d asked to look after my girlfriend while I was there ended up shagging her and she left me for him two days after my release and was pregnant by him within three weeks.

She had two kids with him and then tried to get back with me! You see, she wanted kids and, although I’m clever I’m not that f****ing clever. 

I ended up on the streets then. My parents had moved to Spain. Well my dad did, my mum was finishing work as she was almost pension age, not that she’d have admitted that.

Mum never did follow, but that’s – guess what – another story. I’ve got  lots of ‘another stories’ to tell, but we’ll get to that.

So, I was sleeping under a bridge and woke up one morning to my dad standing there with his luggage – he’d come straight off a plane and a train to find me. One of his friends had called him in Spain because they were worried about me.

He dropped to his knees crying as I sat up in my sleeping bag in my makeshift cardboard box home. That was the first time I’d ever seen my dad cry.

He took me to a Little Chef for a fry-up and within a week paid a deposit on a bed-sit for me. Then for the next few years I flew back and forth between here and Spain, staying there for months at a time.

I’d go over there and do a cold turkey rattle, get clean and get fat, come back to the UK and get back on the drugs each time.

I’d buy half a half ounce of dark (heroin) and sell it to fund my own habit. My parents have given me thousands, even tens of thousands over the years to be honest.

Then, after being raided by the police for the eighth time they finally caught me with some heroin, so I was charged with possession. 

More later….

Contact The New Futures Project on 0116 251 0803 or send us a message at: info@new-futures.org.uk

You can find us at 71 London Road, Leicester, LE2 0PE.

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