Day Four

Day 4: So, today is the story of the ‘haves and the have nots’, or ‘me and him’. It rained yesterday and through the night. Not heavy rain, and not all the time but I have a tent and the rough sleeper, who had heard about what I was doing and who found me, didn’t. 

It was about half past nine when I pitched the tent because the people at Heeley Parish Church had fed both of us and kept us entertained as we talked about homelessness. The ground was wet and I told my companion that we could share the tent. Did I want to share the tent? No, if I’m honest. He told me he hadn’t showered for about a week, so he hadn’t changed for that long either, and, he said, the amount of alcohol he drinks has terrible effects on his bowels. Not very attractive!! But was I prepared to share. Absolutely! But he said ‘No.’ I tried to persuade him and in the end he said if it really rained hard he’d use it as shelter. That was that.

In the night I heard him snoring and groaning. I heard the rain on the tent too. But he stayed where he was. Deep within I knew part of the reason was that to him I was the CEO of the project he uses and I couldn’t bridge that gap. And it is a massive gap. At 7am I packed the tent away as he chatted to me from under his wet sleeping bag. As I walked into the city centre I found myself welling up, upset and fighting back the need to cry. Was it because in his life a wet sleeping bag has become good enough? Maybe, I know I’m struggling with that. Or was it because I had felt so impotent in the night each time I’d woken up. My need to understand and to make the world just slightly better was wounded by a sense of failure or rejection.

There was another thought swimming around in my head. Earlier in the evening he had described his habit of drinking too much and getting into fights. He isn’t small and he reacts to things that make him angry and then, when sobre, regrets it. He added something like, “But I can cope with it, if I can cope with what my dad did to me, I can cope with anything.” Most people who end up sleeping rough have experienced severe childhood traumas. It’s something that creates distance between themselves and the society around them because life becomes an exercise in survival, and trusting others isn’t a great survival technique. The outcomes of trauma aren’t socially pretty - crime, addiction, aggression and much more. Anything that helps to numb the pain and survive. For some it gets too much and death seems the best option. I want to shout this story from the roof tops. Ending homelessness has to start with understanding this story just as much, if not more, as building good quality affordable homes.

If you want to know more about changing the lives of people who are homeless visit www.archerproject.org.uk To donate follow the link https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/timssleepoutslog

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