I have finally finished a portrait project I was working on over christmas. These images were taken on a walk through South East London, but also through time as we returned to the places that impacted him when he was younger. At the age of 19, Miles left home searching for freedom from complications at home. However, over this period of time he found faith instead. He has been through a lot to say the least, and here is the story in his words.
“I don’t want to give the impression that my experience of homelessness is anything comparable to either the image that is conjured by the term or the stories of those on the street for years. Although it is a keen temptation to “sex-up” your own story - especially when some of the terms used look so dramatic written down – this is actually just a little story about how kind Jesus was in helping me to grow up. I would also like to make it clear that my family are a great bunch, even though we are all slightly dysfunctional - like most families. What happened wasn’t anyone’s fault and I’m so grateful for how good things are now I’m a position to appreciate life’s blessings.
After a few adolescent years of me very determinedly going off the rails, I had a big bust up with my family. Basically I was on drugs because I was an insecure teenager and I wanted to be like Pete Doherty, it took a huge toll on my family who were fighting a court case that lasted 8 years and for a time caused my dad to be hospitalized. Looking back, I can see how incredibly fortunate I was. Though I was brought up in quite a rough area of SE London we had a lovely place to live, my Mum and Dad stayed together through all of the tough stuff. Loads of my mates were brought up in broken homes, had parents who took drugs, council estate gangs, all sorts of stuff. I was very blessed.
The long and short is that I was a pillock and ran away and lived like some sort of homeless gypsy for a bit. Me and Dad would just set each other off and it would be my Mum caught in the middle trying to stop us from fighting. Although I had places to stay like my mate Joe’s house and squats I mostly stayed out walking the streets at night, broke into Brockwell Park or slept on night buses going as far as possible (in fact I kept this up for months after I had gone back home, often telling mum and dad that I was staying at Joe’s but instead going off). I just remember feeling so sad and worthless. I was afraid of sleeping in a quiet indoor place because my thoughts were disturbing at the time, it was like I had PTSD or something; horrible images of my then-girlfriend cheating on me, wanting to kill myself, lots of anger and bitterness. I don’t know why, I was so scared and I felt that I couldn’t tell anyone, I was going through a mental breakdown. I had no desire to think these thoughts, they were just flashing into my head without my will. Walking or at least being out meant that I didn’t have to focus on the worst thoughts, although they still crept in and took over. I would buy coke or crack to keep my mind off them and would be up past dawn. Getting high also reminded me of my girlfriend of the time, although I would often try to tell her to stop taking drugs, I found myself slipping into them more and more to feel closer to her when she wasn’t by my side.
I took a lot of different drugs but mainly skunk, coke, ketamine, crack and MDMA. All my problems were internal; to do with relationships and mental tendencies that I didn’t know were damaging me, I had never been diagnosed with mental health problems and so I didn’t know how to manage problems that I didn’t know had.
I was doing a foundation year at Camberwell, my tutor was incredibly supportive through all the mad stuff, and I recently got back in touch with her for an academic reference. I didn’t expect her to remember me. There was a petrol station next door where I would buy a loaf of bread and half a roast chicken and spend lunch breaks making myself endless sandwiches for the next couple of days. The lady who managed the canteen would hide them in the fridge for me and I would get them when I needed them.
The morning when all my work was due in for Camberwell, I woke up and I found that a big lump had cropped up on my leg. I went to hospital and they referred me to the Royal Marsden which is the cancer specialist hospital in South Ken, so I rebuilt the bridge with my Mum and Dad.
It was strange because it never felt scary at the time, none of the “real” scary stuff. You just kind of live through it when it all happens, it was my mind that worried me and I never got a break from it. I didn’t really care what happened to me, I wasn’t happy being me and I didn’t really mind if I died. In fact it made more sense to die, because at least then more people would’ve remembered me well and I would stop hurting the people around me. Death seemed a bit inevitable, there was a bit of me that wanted to get stabbed while I was walking around all hours of the night through places like Streatham, Brixton and Peckham.
My relationship with my then-girlfriend imploded shortly before the last scan on my leg, so I went out for a five day bender which was utterly brutal. It was over Halloween so there were parties everywhere; my batch went from street to street from bars to house parties to rooftops to flat blocks and I ended up so mangled from the drugs I’d taken that I was sitting in some posh girl’s house snorting her seemingly endless cocaine while cutting my ears open with paperclips because apparently I wanted an ear-piercing at that moment in time. I could hack the other stuff, but she was my refuge. Don’t feel bad for me though, I treated her badly and deserved to lose her. God, in His love, also needed me to lose her in order for me to change and come to Him. He was the one who could really heal me
Anyway the afternoon after that massive five-day bender I walked home for what seemed like hours, as high as a kite, having no idea where I was. When I got there I stumbled upstairs and slept in a delirious state for a couple of days, when I woke clean I found a print off with what looked like some lyrics on it. My mum had put psalm 91 next to my bed:
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
So I prayed a prayer asking Jesus to come and be my refuge and admitted that I wasn’t happy with drugs and parties. Even romantic love didn’t solve the emptiness I felt. Peace washed over me, but it didn’t solve everything straight away. Though I was happy for it to be there, it was an island compared to the despair around it.
My MRI scan, where I would find out if the lump was a cancer or not, was in the next couple of days. Having had it pop up so quickly and change shape and stuff I was a little scared, although as I said before I was just in a bit of a daze with life in general, just trying to get through it. I asked my mum to pray for me, I prayed for it too. I went in; they pumped me up with dye, I had my Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons playing while I was in the machine. I can’t remember whether it was straight after the scan or a later appointment where they told me what it was, but the long and the short was that it diagnosed as a birthmark attached to my muscle.
I’m a little slow on the uptake so it was only months, if not over a year later that I looked back and realised that birthmarks do not appear overnight, noticed the timing of the diagnosis after my prayer, how the growth had stopped and recognised that God had used the birth mark to start my life afresh. I still feel the lump in my leg and it makes me think of how He was faithful to me even when I was never faithful to Him.
I can’t really do any type of conclusion, apart from saying that I’m still making a mess of my life to this day, though not like before. Though following Jesus isn’t about being happy, I am happy. There’s a great song that sums it up:
I lean not on my own understanding,
My life is in the hands of the maker of heaven.
I give it all to you God,
Trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.”
