Self-harm

Self-harm in the novel is connected to depression, secrecy, and the effort to give overwhelming distress a form that can be recognized. Ava Spirini approaches that effort through poetry; Gideon speaks directly about his past and shows Ava the lasting marks of it. Their accounts differ in what they disclose, but both resist the idea that suffering is either easily explained or instantly resolved.

Poetry and Invisible Distress

In Broken, Ava sets a childhood broken ankle beside the depression she experienced at fourteen. The poem distinguishes a visible injury, around which other people could offer messages of encouragement, from mental distress that she describes as harder to treat and marked by stigma. Its image of trying to put casts around breaks no one can see makes recovery an ongoing task rather than a single event. The poem does not identify Ava’s distress as self-harm; its relevance to the concept lies in the way it places depression, unseen pain, and the daily effort to remain alive in the same account.

The poem also changes meaning as Ava’s relationship to it changes. She wrote it about a year before performing it and had previously been reluctant to show it to anyone. Even writing the word depressed had felt like an admission. In performance, she presents the poem to an audience; afterward, applause, cheers, and her mother’s emotional response meet a disclosure she had kept private. Ava explains that writing makes thoughts tangible, something she can look at and become accustomed to. With time, the poem feels less like a confession and more like something she made. That distinction matters: the writing records real distress, but it also gives Ava some distance from treating that distress as the whole of her identity.

Gideon’s History and Disclosure

Gideon’s poem Head of State gives his history a different form. It connects the marks on his skin with pain he could not readily explain to his mother, Susan, and with his sense that she wanted to protect him. The poem’s images of concealment and a mother trying to understand lead into a conversation in which Ava learns that Gideon has a history of self-harm. The performance thus acts as a disclosure before he tells her the specific circumstances: the poem makes the subject present, but Ava still has to ask what lies behind it.

Gideon says the behavior began five years earlier. He describes one way he concealed it: after deliberately breaking a glass in the kitchen and helping clean it up, he would keep fragments in his pocket. His parents did not know for a long time. During a summer holiday at the Barrier Reef, he refused to snorkel and kept his long sleeves on; Susan found out after he had showered and she entered the bathroom. Gideon says she had probably suspected something during the trip because he would not take off his jumper. These details establish the practical work of hiding his distress and the circumstances in which a parent finally saw evidence of it, without suggesting that the discovery immediately ended the problem.

Ava is startled when Gideon rolls up his sleeves and lets her see the old scars. She asks how long it had been going on and whether his parents knew; later, she asks to see his arms again and touches the marks. He allows her to look, though he does not look at them himself. The exchange is intimate but not presented as a cure: Ava’s attention gives Gideon a witness, while the scars remain a record of a history she had not understood before his poem and their conversation.

What the Behavior Meant to Gideon

When Ava asks why, Gideon explains that everything had felt too large and beyond his control. He describes self-harm as an outward pain he could see and watch heal. The explanation identifies a function it had for him at that time: it made distress feel bounded and observable when other parts of life did not. It does not turn that response into a solution. His account includes fear and hesitation, and he does not present himself as having mastered the feelings behind it simply by explaining them.

Asked whether he had wanted to die, Gideon initially stops before completing his answer. When Ava asks whether he has wanted to, he says no, while also explaining that the feeling does not vanish; it becomes smaller in relation to him. He reaches for the image of fitting it into a box. The distinction between disappearance and becoming smaller gives the conversation its measure of change: the feeling is still present, but it no longer occupies the same proportion of his experience. The exchange does not provide a diagnosis or a complete account of his recovery, and it does not establish that the risk is permanently over.

Witnessing Without a Simple Resolution

The accounts of Ava and Gideon make disclosure a recurring part of how the novel handles hidden distress. Ava’s poem moves from private writing to a public performance, while Gideon’s poem leads into a more personal conversation with Ava. In both cases, an artistic form allows something difficult to be approached; neither poem makes the underlying experience uncomplicated. Ava’s writing helps her regard the poem as something she has made, and Gideon’s explanation gives Ava a clearer understanding of his past, but neither outcome erases what came before.

The contrast between visible and invisible evidence is central. Ava’s poem emphasizes how depression may remain unseen, while Gideon’s history includes scars and the long effort to keep them concealed. His mother’s discovery and Ava’s response show different moments of being seen; the narrative treats recognition as meaningful, not as a substitute for what the person experiencing distress may need. Self-harm is therefore presented neither as a sensational revelation nor as a tidy turning point. It is part of a longer account of pain, concealment, communication, and the possibility that a feeling can become smaller without simply going away.