a must-read for anyone whose life has at any point been tested by pushing themselves against the water, especially for those whose bodies have been politicized. swimming is a very weird sport; suspended in a medium foreign to what our bodies are designed for, pushing ourselves individually against it until either we break or we grow over it. the glory is personal, as are the sacrifices and means we fashion ourselves into swimmers. yet, this mode of liberating oneself from definitions on what their body does and looks like are also deeply interwoven with institutions that put sex, gender and sexuality as imposing monoliths on how our body can exist in these competitive spaces. I relate a lot to Miley. competitive swimming is the reason I didn't come out until after high school, and swimming is a part of myself I had to completely break off from my interests and expressions as soon as I did. after five years of dreams, that warped the water into this mystical, primordial nest, one part of myself from back then I desperately wanted (it's motions, outside of those of love, were the strongest, most able, most at home I've ever felt). yet, it's blanketed in a cruelty, subsumed from the outside by the pressure of hate. yesterday, I swam for the first time in years. a distance swammer no longer able to do more than a 200. I may not be as strong as I was, find the same elegance in myself as I did breaking down before it, but it was nice. the sport, as art and as politic, subjugation and freedom, in isolation, returned to art once more. thanks for creating something that very competently tackled both the mythicality of water and this contention towards reclaiming it I've felt for years. thank you for articulating something I've needed to hear for years in such a well-researched way <3