Day 13

Day 13: First survive, then thrive..

I’m sat on The Moor, one of the main shopping streets in Sheffield. It’s 8.30am. Shops are getting ready to open and a few familiar faces have walked past me. Two are men who are part of the street homeless population. One has accommodation. He walked past with a can of alcohol in his hand, open. It would be easy for me to judge him, after all he could be at home instead of here and he's drinking early in the morning. I feel conflicted because I know there's a reason he turned to drink. I also know he won't be easy to deal with later in the day if he drinks too much.

I have a day of nothingness ahead. It is beyond boredom. It is surviving, with no other purpose than to get through the day. There are moments of relief, and for some that comes in the form of alcohol or drugs. Yesterday, for me, it was Carla. She spotted me and waved. I came alive. A smiling face I knew walking towards me!!

Carla has never been homeless, but her dad was. Homeless and a street alcoholic, he was killed on Fargate. He wasn’t dissimilar to the person who passed me a few minutes ago, except that for Carla’s dad, there was a successful career and family life before that series of events came along that led to a breakdown. 

He hadn’t decided to be homeless. He didn’t set out to be rejected and judged. When I knew him, he argued powerfully and persuasively, even cantankerously. He was clever. He cared for others on the street. I called him ‘The Doctor’ because he knew more about health and social care than me. His experience of breakdown and street life left him with little hope. He focused on survival, both his and those he shared his life with. Getting alcohol was part of that. Survival is a different mindset than choice. 

All these years later, Carla fights for people who others continue to judge. It is personal. People who suffer homelessness should have better food, they should have health care, they should have everything that makes life bearable, and it should happen today, now. Now is the most important time. 

Carla can’t change what happened to her dad, but we can change the future for others.

So, something else from yesterday. Theresa, responding to the blog and the comments that came from it, talked about the pain of being a mother watching her daughter suffer. Then she thanked the Archer Project and Printed by Us. It reminded me that all this very necessary talk about homelessness isn’t complete without the knowledge that people survive and go on to thrive. 
Something to celebrate!

Find out more about how we employ people with a history of homelessness and take a look at our premium quality sustainably produced screen printed artwork and garments at https://www.printedbyus.org/

If you want to know more about changing the lives of people who are homeless visit www.archerproject.org.uk 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 11

Image
Day 11: Lest we forget.. It’s 5.52am and I’ve had a fairly good sleep. Lying here in the beautiful doorway of St Mary's - Ecclesfield , a cloudy moon is alone in the sky. When I went to sleep the sky was full of stars. I don’t know their names.   If Gav was here he might tell me something about constellations. He died in 2020 after years of alcohol abuse. When I first knew him, sometimes passed out on the Cathedral grass, I couldn’t have guessed at the intelligence that filled his head. I wouldn’t have guessed the horrors either. The violent death he witnessed, the rejection by his stepdad, the journey into the care system which didn’t work for him, the loss of a daughter and so the story goes on. This doorway is poignant too. The last time I was here was for the funeral of K. Twenty years of military service, three stripes on his arm and enough trauma to sink a battleship. He used the Archer Project for just a few months. In that time we saw the two sides, a joy and ze
Read more

Afterthoughts 3

Image
14 nights but I still don’t know what homelessness is like for women During my fortnight on the streets, several women said to me that if they were to sleep rough there would be, as one woman put it, “an extra layer of vulnerability”. I realised I hadn’t ever considered the risk of a sexual attack. I’ve known men who have been sexually abused whilst rough sleeping, but they seem isolated incidents. I never considered it could happen to me. Women seemed to consider it automatically.  I am uncomfortable writing this blog. A 57-year-old man sharing insights into being female and homeless? The reality is that I’m admitting my ignorance. After 17 years I thought I knew the issues of female homelessness. I probably do but I now realise how little I understand them. I remember an incident of a woman who was nineteen. She came to the project seeking help. Her boyfriend had been arrested. She was alone and said, in the space of an afternoon, three men had offered to ‘protect’ her. S
Read more

Day Three

Image
Day 3: Can I trust you? What are you up to? I spent the first part of last night scanning the people passing by me. People take a short cut through St Aidan C Of E Church churchyard and walked right next to me, tucked up in the doorway. It’s the closest I want to be to being afraid.  A man walked past and noticed me. Immediately, he looked straight ahead, avoiding any eye contact. What was I? Something to be afraid of? Something unwanted? I didn’t know but I instantly felt wary of him. Another did the same. The first man returned, eyes fixed away from me. A man and a woman walked by, the woman turned, looked surprised to see me and then smiled and said ‘Hello.’ What a smile, such a small but valuable thing. I’d started to feel vulnerable and question whether I was safe. In just half an hour I’d realised I needed to stay alert. I wasn’t going to take my shoes off in case I need to get up quickly. I was going to drape my sleeping bag over me and not get in it because I might
Read more