Fierce (3 page)
Authors: Kelly Osbourne
I was nine and I thought we were going to buy me a new pair of elasticated-waist jeans. They were my favourite style of jeans and I thought I looked so fucking cool when I wore them.
The nearest Marks & Spencer to Welders is in High Wycombe. It’s where Mum bought most of our clothes when we were growing up. High Wycombe is a small town twenty-nine miles outside of London but it was the centre of my world when I was growing up. It had all the shops that we loved to spend our five-pounds-a-week pocket money in.
Jack and I would always go to the Woolworths on the High Street after we’d left school and pose for photos in the tiny booth together. Jack would pull faces and I’d cry.
On this particular Saturday, my mum drove me and Aimee and we parked in the town centre. We walked into M&S and that distinct homely smell hit our faces as we stepped out of the cold. I headed straight to the kids’ clothes section to check out the new jeans. Then my mum, with Aimee standing next
to her, piped up across the shop floor, ‘Kelly, just come over here for a second. This lady wants to measure you for something.’ It was really busy and everyone looked up when my mum shouted across the shop. I walked over and this woman whipped out this yellow tape measure and wrapped it around my chest over my T-shirt, right in the middle of the shop. Everyone was peering from behind the bras and knickers, looking at me. Mum was standing behind the woman, giggling with Aimee. I realised it was a ‘Mum & Aimee’ plot. I wasn’t in M&S to buy a new pair of jeans at all.
Then the shop assistant announced to the entire shop that my bra size was something ridiculously small like a 28AAA and I’m looking at my mum thinking, ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ Mum bought me this flimsy white bra with a flower on it. I really couldn’t see the point of it.
B
ACK
at home in my bedroom – minus the elasticated jeans – my new bra seemed so complicated to fasten. I wriggled about and finally managed to do it up while standing in my bedroom in front of the mirror. I was praying Jack didn’t barge in. I decided I really didn’t like wearing a bra. It dug in and was really fucking uncomfortable.
I was the biggest tomboy you could ever meet and a bra just didn’t go with my image. It definitely didn’t go with Jack’s T-shirts with Ghostbusters on the front that I liked to wear. I was mortified about it. Jack and I regularly shared clothes. I lived in jeans, T-shirts and a bright red fleece jacket. I didn’t want my little brother Jack to find out about the bra because he really would take the piss. He would
probably tell my dad too, which would be even more embarrassing.
I decided to put on my new bra on Monday to keep my mum happy. I felt so bloody self-conscious. It felt like the whole world could see it under my school jumper. As soon as I got to school, I took it off in the toilets and stuffed it in my backpack. None of my friends had a bra. I seemed to grow tits before everyone else. Now I don’t seem to have them. How fucking typical.
On the first day I was brave enough to wear it all day, Jack came marching up to me as I stood with all my friends. He proudly pinged the bra strap and stood back pissing himself laughing. Everyone instantly knew that Kelly Osbourne had a bra on. Yeah thanks, Jack.
I was always Daddy’s Little Girl. I still am. I can do no wrong in his eyes
.
I
T’S
not like I remember a particular moment when I thought, ‘My dad takes drugs.’ He just always did. So many years later, having gone through my own experiences with addiction, I can appreciate just how difficult it was for my father as he battled his problems with drink and drugs. I’m so unbelievably proud of him. He is my hero.
When I was eight, I was researching a school project on families. I was going through the boxes of family photographs that my mum kept in her dressing room at Welders. I found one tucked in the corner of the box of my father sitting on an armchair holding up a clear plastic bag with a zip top. It was half-full of white powder.
I ran to find my mum and asked, ‘What’s this?’
She replied, ‘It’s flour, darling.’ It wasn’t until several years later that I actually twigged that my father had been holding a bag of cocaine.
That scenario was quite unusual because my mum has always, always been honest with us. Of course, she didn’t sit us down and give
us all an in-depth explanation of what drugs were. And I suppose it would have been wholly inappropriate for her to say it was cocaine.
But what she would always do was reassure me, Aimee and Jack that Daddy would be OK. She would say, ‘You know your daddy loves you, but he is not very well.’ Or she would tell us when he was about to go into rehab, ‘Daddy has got to go away for a while.’
O
NE
of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as I’ve got older is that parents and people who care about us often protect us from things, because they know something we don’t. You might wonder why they didn’t tell you something. You might be bloody annoyed they didn’t tell you something; but nine times out of ten there is a good reason why.
It could be something obvious, but most of the time I think parents protect us because their life experience tells them it’s best that we don’t know. Coming to accept that there are things we don’t know can be really tough, but being in any relationship – with your family, a friend or a partner – means trusting the other person, and that includes letting them not tell you things if they think that’s the best thing to do.
Whatever you’re struggling with, whether it’s an addict in the family or you’re worried about your mum or dad for other reasons, there’s a completely fantastic organisation called the Samaritans who are always there to talk through the tough times. They’re completely confidential, they’re at the other end of the phone and they’ll listen to you, whatever the problem.
Samaritans offers a twenty-four-hour confidential emotional support service for anyone in the UK and Ireland. You can call their volunteers, email or write for advice or go to one of the 202 branches and talk face to face.
She tried her hardest to keep everything in the open, so we didn’t think there were secrets that would make us worry.
My dad went into rehab for the first time the day after I was born. I was the only one out of me, Jack and Aimee who was not born at the Wellington Hospital in London. My mum decided not to have an epidural when she had me, so I was born at the Portland.
My dad came to visit me and my mum in the hospital. After he held me for the first time she organised for him to go into rehab. She said that he couldn’t come into our lives until he got better. He wasn’t in my life for the first three months because he was in rehab somewhere in Palm Springs. It was the Betty Ford Clinic. Later, my mum told me that Dad had walked in there and asked where the wine was. When they said there was no booze, my dad replied, ‘Well, I was told that I was coming in here to learn how to drink like a gentleman.’ That’s what my mum had told him to get him to go.
There would be plenty more rehab visits to come during my life. All of them brought the same hope when Dad came back out. Little did I realise then that my life would be affected too, years later, by addiction and rehab.
My dad’s life – his drinking and drug-taking – was just normal to me because I didn’t know any different. Only now do I realise how innocent I was about the things that were going on around me. But that’s not a bad thing.
My father would always be changing his vice. Rock doctors (these are doctors who like to hang out with bands and give them their drugs) would visit our house all the time. He would smoke cannabis or take
‘downers’, which are pills that would knock him out. Other times he would become addicted to prescription painkillers.
‘My dad’s life – his drinking and drug-taking – was just normal to me because I didn’t know any different. Only now do I realise how innocent I was about the things that were going on around me. But that’s not a bad thing.’
We’d also go through periods when my dad would be drinking lots because he is a cross-addict, which means he would go from being addicted to drugs to being addicted to alcohol. Actually, when my dad first went back on the booze he would be really good fun. It was like when you go to the pub and have a great night out. Dad would be really happy and loud and up. Life would be great.
But after a while he wouldn’t be happy any more. He’d turn into a grumpy drinker. He’d become really angry and I absolutely hated that. He would become unbearable. My mum and dad would have some pretty major fights when my dad was drinking and taking drugs. I knew what my dad had taken pretty much by his behaviour when I walked through the front door after school. If he was being loud and boisterous, he’d usually spent the day drinking.
One day when I came home my dad was dressed head to toe in an army uniform. He saluted me as I walked into the kitchen and dumped my bag on the table. What could I say? I think I said, ‘Hi, Dad. Been on the booze again?’
If my dad was lying on the sofa with a blanket over him, it meant he had been doing downers all day. He was out of it. Asleep. Nothing was going to bring him round.
There were times when I used to cry. It was so frustrating seeing him like that. And yes, I thought my dad was going to die. When doctors are visiting your house, you worry. Even as a child. It’s not easy having an addict in the family. It’s really fucking hard. Every time my
dad went into rehab I used to think to myself, ‘Maybe this time it’ll work. I hope this time it works.’ I never thought he would fail.
Of course now I know how difficult it can be fighting addictions. If I was mad at him then for taking drugs and drinking, I definitely don’t now because I understand. I’m an addict myself.
Once I got really angry with him for behaving the way he did. I think he was addicted to painkillers at the time. It meant he was out of it. He sat me down and said, ‘Kelly, are you cold? Are you hungry? Do you want for anything?’ Thinking I would finish the sentence with, ‘No.’ he said, ‘Well then.’