Living on the streets
offered to find me proper shelter for the night.
“A lot of people warned me it wasn’t a game and told me to go home because I could get injured or sick. They were concerned for me,” he added.
On Thursday night Randy, freezing cold and sleep deprived, walked from Fallowfield to Didsbury to try and get his head straight.
“When I arrived at Didsbury I had a coughing fit and when I looked down there was blood,” he said. “That’s when I thought this is actually taking a toll on my health now.”
Mentally drained and physically exhausted, Randy fell asleep on a bench and hearing muffled conversation.
“I didn’t really understand what was going on,” he said before describing how he woke up in his bedroom on Friday, November 4.
“I don’t remember how I got home. I must have been on autopilot. Mentally I wasn’t there but physically I managed to get home somehow. If someone had come out on that Friday and told me I was going to have to do it for another week I probably would have broken down, I was at my breaking point.
“The hardest part was the social side of it, although there were people around me I still felt isolated”, he says.
“I’d be sat there thinking this is terrible because people were looking down on me and this is what homeless people have to deal with. I was by myself, I couldn’t sleep because I was so paranoid that something would happen to me. It was very mentally challenging.
“What makes it so bad for people who are actually homeless is the unpredictability of it - I knew after five days I could go back to a warm house that’s why when I was at the Cornerstone Centre, I felt so protected in such a sense of community.”
Randy’s GoFundMe page is on its way to raising a £1,000, and he has been inundated with messages of support on social media.
“My brothers were all supportive, my mum wasn’t actually aware of what I was doing until after I did it because she would worry so much and she wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing if I was on the streets,” he said.
“Afterwards, she had a go at me for putting myself at risk but she was proud of me. My dad was proud as well but then he scolded me for being irresponsible.”
Since then, Randy has been in contact with the Cornerstone Centre to volunteer and help out.
“Homeless people don’t just want money; social interaction will mean a lot more to them sometimes,” he said.
“A lot of people just assume they are drug addicts when a lot of the time they’re not, they just want to be accepted by society.”
A documentary recording Randy’s experience is expected to be released next month.