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Name: Jaylen Carrington Miller Age: 29 years old Gender: Cisgender Man, He/him Occupation: Adventure Guide Faceclaim: Niko Terho Height: 5'9 Build: Muscular, athletic Sexuality: Gay Smokes: No Drinks: Yes Tattoos: None Piercings: None
BIOGRAPHY (tw: drug abuse, internalized racism, child abuse, domestic violence):
Jaylen grew up with screaming and broken furniture, hiding in the small closet of his bedroom while his parents fought, got drunk and did drugs in the other room. He was brought up with screaming matches and thrown fists, clothes that never fit him, a stomach that was never filled with food, and sometimes even left outside to sleep in the yard or under the porch. He was born out of an affair between his mother and an unknown man, and neither parent ever forgave him for it. Their relationship had been awful before that, but Jaylen's arrival didn't exactly bring them closer, except for the times his existence gave them someone to gang up on. His neighbors had called the police several times before action was eventually taken. They were charged with child abuse and neglect, and Jaylen was removed from their care.
A local news reporter, Evelyn Miller, who had been covering his case took an interest in Jaylen. She was a kind-hearted woman, and while she knew realistically she couldn't save everyone who was in a bad situation, she knew she had room in her home for that little boy. When he was seven years old, he came home with her, and never left. He loved the outdoors, going out to explore, helping out on his new grandparents' farm, and it was a good excuse to get away when he and his adopted brother would fight, two kids of a similar age who simply clashed on account of existing in the same space. Maybe it was all internal, leftover from the wounds his other parents had left behind, but his adopted mom became the only person in the family that he felt truly loved him, and he was heartbroken when she died when he was thirteen. In many ways, that was a loss Jaylen never recovered.
He was constantly between two worlds, not dark enough to feel like he fit with the black community, not white enough to feel like he fit with his adopted family, constantly asked if he was Latino or Italian, people looking at him next to his paler skinned, blue-eyed siblings with questions like "where did you get this one from?" For lack of a better term, he felt like the black sheep, the extra piece of baggage in what was otherwise a picture-perfect family. Maybe that was why he spent as much time out of the house as possible, convincing friends and neighbors to take him whenever they went kayaking, bike riding, or on a camping trip, joining the boy scouts and going on as many overnight trips as possible. He even set up a tent in the backyard, made a den in his tree house in summer. He felt like he slept under the stars more often than in his own bed, and strangely, it felt more like home.
In his teens, when the stars and the woods weren’t enough to save him from the darkness of his inner thoughts, Jaylen turned to drugs, falling into a vicious spiral for a while, getting in petty legal trouble and ending up in a hospital bed on a drip. A near overdose convinced him to get clean, and he attempted to throw his urge for self-destruction into something positive. He started volunteering with the boy scout troop that had been his salvation as a young child, and the experience he garnered found him a paying job with a local tourism and outdoor activities company as an adventure guide.
Jaylen had always loved outdoor survival shows, and people had told him he should apply to be a contestant on something like The Amazing Race or Survivor ever since he’d turned eighteen. He’d tried a few times, but he was twenty-six before he got the call that he’d been cast in some big new survival and outdoor challenge show on Netflix. Jaylen couldn’t believe it, and he hit the jungle with the same enthusiasm with which he tackled his other outdoor adventures. It was rough, almost six weeks in the wilderness, limited food, physical and mental challenges, and a social game that challenged Jaylen in ways he never could have imagined, but somehow, not only did Jaylen make his way to the end, but he won the damn thing.
It was as if ever voice in his head that had told him he wasn’t good enough was finally silenced, at least for a moment, and the unfathomable dollar amount amount of the prize money didn’t exactly hurt things. Like most blessings, though, his success came with downsides. He can’t help but wonder if any positive attention he gets from friends, family, and even strangers is because of his fifteen minutes of fame and the money that was deposited into his bank account. The attention got him some interviews, social media following, and even a brief survival show of his own that unfortunately never got picked up. It's now almost two years after his season aired and Jaylen can’t help but wonder if it’s the best he’ll ever feel, and whether it’s only downhill from here. Even after accomplishing something he could only dream about as a child, Jaylen remains his own harshest critic.
