can you discuss graysons swimming self harm please
swimming isn't an inherently harmful activity. grayson likes swimming, and it's one of the skills that he chose to develop for his birthday. however, it becomes self harm once he starts using the sport to punish himself for his perceived failures, to avoid his own thoughts and feelings, and to overall try to reclaim control over himself and his body after a perceived loss of it due to stressful circumstances in his life, trauma, or his own mistakes.
this paragraph from the brothers hawthorne is interesting to me and sums it up pretty well.
Swimming, like the violin, longsword, knife fighting, and photography, had been one of Grayson’s selections in their grandfather’s yearly birthday ritual. He’d been on the track for the Olympics once. Now all he wanted was to swim until his body gave in—faster, harder, cutting through the water, his pace punishing, unsustainable.
He sustained it.
With his lungs and muscles burning, Grayson didn’t have to think about Gigi, about hospital rooms full of balloons and fathers who sat in the front row at games. About the safe-deposit box. About the key Gigi wore around her neck.
Most people considered power and weakness opposites, but Grayson had learned early in life that the real opposite of weakness was control.
first of all. "insignificant" detail. grayson was on the track for the olympics once. on the track. not actually in the olympics, and not an olympic gold medalist. so grayson is very good at swimming. but not good enough to make the cut for the olympics? not good enough to win? interesting. i'm curious. when was this? how old was he? how did his dear old grandfather feel about this? what did he say? why wasn't grayson good enough? why did he fail? hm. there is the alternative that maybe he or his grandfather didn't want him to compete, because there were more important things........ but somehow i doubt that. and this feels important to me, because it leads to the question: why swimming? why not swordfighting? knife fighting? violin playing? why is swimming the coping mechanism, why does he associate swimming with reclaiming control? why that one specifically? i have so many questions. why did she write that sentence if she didn't want me to ask them? why?????
moving on. grayson no longer swims competitively. he does, however, swim violently. it's a fitting way to describe it. he deliberately swims at a pace his body cannot sustain and forces himself to bear it because it's the only thing that makes the thoughts and feelings stop. because if he's hurting in this way, a way he chose, a way he has control over, he can stop himself from hurting in a way he doesn't want and can't control. he always does this. losing the inheritance, avery moving in, arguing with jameson? pool (TIG ch 18). toby being alive, avoiding avery? pool (THL ch 14). eve? pool (TFG ch 23). reading the files on the things his grandfather had done? pool (TFG ch 40 and 42). meeting gigi and finding out about the safe deposit box? pool (TBH ch 11). finding out about eve's spy and having a nightmare? pool (TBH ch 38). seeing the photographs his father had taken of him? pool (TBH ch 55). you get my point.
self harm is all about control, and for grayson, swimming is what he uses to gain that control. and it is painful. he deliberately consciously makes it painful. it is self harm. and other people can tell. by which i mean avery obviously
Down below, I saw movement in the pool. Grayson. His arms cut through the water in a brutal, punishing breaststroke. Even from a distance, I could see the way his muscles pulled against his skin. No matter how long I watched him, his pace never changed. I wondered if he was swimming to get away from something. To silence the thoughts in his mind.
Grayson took to the pool, pushing himself past the point of human endurance again and again...
even if you don't call it self harm, because they don't explicitly call it that in the books, it is very clearly a maladaptive coping mechanism. and his therapist agrees!
"apparently" 😂😂 "supposedly" 😂😂
he's working through it, and he's committed to that, but it's still his first instinct when experiencing stressful situations and painful feelings, like when the watch situation happened with lyra.
it took everything in him. not to WALK INTO THE OCEAN. not to SUBMERGE HIMSELF in the BITTERLY COLD WATER and SWIM and SWIM and PUSH IT ALL DOWN.
IT TOOK EVERYTHING IN HIM.
this is a deeply ingrained coping mechanism. he struggles against it, he struggles without it, he's just now starting to learn to live beyond it and it's extremely hard.
on a positive note, however. swimming isn't an inherently harmful activity. grayson likes swimming. grayson likes the pool. it helps him sleep. it helps him breathe. it puts him at ease. and it can do that in a healthy way. it doesn't have to hurt him.
he's learning not to need for it to hurt him :)
