I walk past this graffiti every day as I go down Greeves Street. It has always seemed sad to me. Like a perfectly placed reminder that sometimes when you screw something up, you have screwed it up not just in the moment you make the decision, but for the whole of your future.

R. came bursting through the door in haste, apologetically stinking of booze. ‘Gemma, you are my saviour,’ she yelled drunkenly from behind the toilet door as I brought her a roll of loo paper. She swayed by the urn, making a coffee while she told me the story. She had been to a job interview that morning and told me she was sure it was hers. But later the phone call came that told her that it wasn’t, that they’d gone for someone else. ‘Can they check to see if you have told the truth on your CV?’ she asked. I hesitated knowing the answer wasn’t going to brighten her day. I said I was sure they wouldn’t investigate too deeply, a sentiment she rejected. ‘I’m fucked. Fucked. What was I going to say? That I haven’t worked for ten years because I’m a drug addict?’

You can’t help but agree. Being a drug-addicted prostitute is not exactly an appealing attribute in a potential employee. I suppose it’s a position from which both sides get my understanding. I can understand an employer not wanting to take a chance on someone who has an unpredictable life. I can understand not wanting to be the person that gets screwed by someone who can’t quite meet the promises they have made, someone who bails inconveniently because their habit is stronger than they are.

She swayed off, on the phone to a friend, crying. ‘I’m trying so hard’, she said, ‘I’ve been to so many interviews. Am I supposed to pack shelves at Coles?’ The person on the other end was clearly dispensing some tough love. ‘No there’s nothing wrong with that. I just want you to understand how I feel…Fuck why can’t I do something that I’m good at, or that I enjoy?’ she sobbed into her phone. Minutes later, she apologised for her tears, grabbed a couple of tissues and lurched out the door.

R. doesn’t want to be a lawyer or an architect. She wants to answer phones, do some typing, sit at a desk and live an ordinary life. The women who come in talk often about their dreams, much the same as my other friends do, verbalising their imaginary futures, sharing their ambitions. Most won’t ever get to hold down a desk job, because most won’t be offered one in the first place. Who will take that chance?

Much later W. wanders in as I sit pondering the day’s turn of events. I can tell I’m growing on her by the way she randomly starts up in the middle of a story, vaguely speaking in my general direction. Today she takes up a thread about wanting to have a baby. She sees it as a way to go clean. She would never touch drugs if she had a baby she says, sneering at the women who do. She doesn’t care who the father is, she’s running out of time, and she just wants one. Later on, she says, she might find someone to fall in love with. While you’d think my heart would have toughened up by now, it cracks at this point. W. is staggering under the effect of the drugs she has just taken, her blonde hair has an inch of dark regrowth and her face has streaks of garish makeup. She trades her mouth for money, but she wants love. She sees herself being loved.

She’s thirty six, and like my other girlfriends of the same age, her biological clock is ticking. In a twist, one of my friends had called me earlier in the day to have the same conversation. But the conversation I have with W. raises far more questions than the one I have with my friend. I wonder how her skinny, abused body would cope with carrying a baby, wonder about her fertility and her ability to take care of the child she longs for.

These two women’s dreams are fading because of a similar decision they made, long before they knew where it was going to take them, to indulge in the tiniest little bit of escape in a needle.

I don’t doubt the basic human ability to enact change, of character or of lifestyle. I’ve even seen it happen and heard of the ones who have moved on. But still I wonder, when there is so little support from the outside community, just how many will achieve their modest dreams of desk jobs and love. It would take a tremendous amount of compassion and bravery, from people willing to step outside their comfortable lives and take a risk.

Is it going to happen for either R. or W. or any of the other women who have the very same dreams and ambitions that you and I do? I don’t know. I really don’t.