Bobby & Karen’s Story

“We just want to be happy”

Set in Dundee, this story explores relationships, setbacks, hope and addiction.

 “I love this…”

“Yeah, love…. He walked us down to my step-dad’s house where I was living at the time, and then he texts us…”

“Planning on asking her on a date…”

“But he never…”

“I didnae have the balls…”

“I got up to my step-dad’s house and I got a text, ‘Will you go on a date with me?’ and we been together…”

“For six year. Basically Karen was getting run over before she met me.”

“I wasn’t caring. I was just letting anyone come in and do what they want at the time. It got to the point where I was that low, you know what I mean, I was that lonely, I was just wanting company, I was just letting anyone come in….”

“Using the house as a den….”

“But then I met Bobby, and things got better. Then worse, but better.”

“She was earwigging my conversation on the bus…”

“I wasn’t… He was sitting on the back of the bus, on his phone, and I was sitting, like two seats in front of him. Anybody would’ve heard him.”

“And she went…’Mister, are you going to see Peter Kinghorn? Would you be able to show me the way?”

“It was good at the start,”

“It was good at the start,”

“Then the drugs took a hold… I was on drugs way before I met Karen. My dad was an alcoholic. All my life from a bairn… an alcoholic. Me, it was just pure pressure”

“Circumstances change in life, like I used to think before, I used to think, ‘Why would people take heroin, what would people think in their mind to take heroin?’ Know what I mean? And then my circumstances and my life changed, and I went out and I done it. I never thought I would ever do it. I thought I’d never, ever do that. But circumstances in life changes, so something happened when I was like, twenty-six, I’d got PTSD and manic-depressive, and I went to my sister’s and she had it, and I asked to try it, so I tried it. And then he got the jail, then I got bad on heroin, I got really, really bad. He’s seen me at my worst, for which I’m glad. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want him worrying about us and all that. And he came out for that three month, and when he went back in, that’s when I got really, really bad, really bad on it.”

“And that’s when I said, ‘Karen, just deal with it.’”

“He said, ‘Just get on with your life,’ but if I’d only been with him a few months, I probably would have got on with my life, but because I’d been with him for a few year, I loved him and I wanted to stay with him.”

“Three weeks before I went to jail, I went ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m no doing this any more, I’m sick of these drugs.’ Go on meth it’ll sort your life out there and then.”

“It’s coming off the methadone, ‘cause he’s just done it, he’s came off the methadone.”

“We still see the old users…”

“People that we knew when we were on drugs…”

“We still see them… We still speak to them. They ken that we’re off”

“But they keep trying to offer him stuff, drag him back into that life. My decision was, years later, going back on the methadone, I don’t touch it, I don’t touch it any more. I don’t touch Valium any more. I’m accepting the help, I’m accepting that, I’m doing it properly, well I think I’m doing it properly, I mean, I’m up and down, up and down, I just need a bit more support, that’s all.”

“’Cause he took drugs longer than me, people think we’re a mismatch, like people saying to me ‘What are you doing to him?’ and I’ve told them, ‘It’s going to take time for people to realise and believe that he’s not like that anymore. It’s not going to happen overnight. He thinks if it wasn’t for me, he’d be back in the jail already.”

“I’d still be back in that vicious circle that you can’t get out of… In jail, out jail, couple of months, in jail, out jail… I’m half-way, I’m getting there.”

“In a way, we sort of rely on each other, ken what I mean, I rely on him for things, and he relies on me for things, you know what I mean. Like every couple, relies on each other. In ten years’ time, I’d like to see us married, settled down with kids, living in a nice wee house with a wee garden. Just us. Happy. Just to be happy.”