Month: October 2024

A mother’s broken heart

I started using drugs at the age of 13 and have been using them for 17 years. Methamphetamine, primarily. At first, I was influenced by my peers… I was curious and used them for fun. But when things got difficult at home, constant arguments and scoldings, I decided to run away and joined a group of drug users, thus becoming a drug addict.

At first, I didn’t realise the drugs were doing me any harm since I didn’t seem to have any averse reactions to them. I only saw the effect it had on others, symptoms such as sleeplessness, obsessive behaviour, hallucinations, thoughts of self-harm, and losing control of their emotions.

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Caught between the lines

I was born in 1971 in Hong Kong. I am the youngest in my family and come from a single-parent household, raised by my father. I have an older brother, and no one in my family uses drugs. I have never used drugs and have had no exposure to them since I was young.

At the age of 22, I married my first husband. We had three children together: our oldest daughter is 30 years old, a son who is 25 years old, and our youngest daughter who is 13 years old. I have always taken care of the children by myself. My ex-husband, a printer by profession, was a gambler who never provided enough for our family. I home-schooled all my children and always tried to set a good example.

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If only bad people wore a label

I have been struggling to put pen to paper. Even when I started, I kept rewriting it and it took me a long time to finish it.

I am 28 years old and was born in Hong Kong. I grew up in a broken family. My parents divorced when I was three years old, and I have an older sister and brother. My mother emigrated abroad over 20 years ago, and there are no relatives from my father’s side here. My siblings are much older than me and left home earlier on rather than endure the discordant atmosphere of our home. In addition, my father had to work outside for a long time to support the family, this meant that I was pretty much on my own during my formative years. My father is a serious and traditional person. He made it clear when I was young that I had to “leave home at 18,” so I was deprived of the opportunity to attend university at an early age, and I left home without a solid financial foundation.

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