by Lucinda Ruh
My back pain was subsiding a little, perhaps because of my mental strength and having once more a goal I needed to attain with no excuses. Mind over matter might work after all, but there had been no magic yet and my bone in my spine was still protruding. I mostly just did stroking exercises and footwork as I tried to get my feet back under me. I did not dare jump. As for my spins, I just succumbed to doing the basic ones. Spinning was so engrained in my blood that I knew when the time came for the world to see them, I would just bite my lip and do them. It was a natural habitat for me and this habitat needed not much grooming. Doing spins for over fifteen years resulted in a great deal of confidence.
However, I was not confident about how my spine would react with the protruding bone in the exact spot where I needed to bend my back all the way down in the laybacks, and the same spot where I twisted sideways in my spin creations, and exactly the location of all the stress in the Biellmann spins. I would have to manage somehow. I left for England to have some new programs done by a famous British choreographer. We were scheduled to do just one new program but since I learned it so fast we had spare time and did another. Another, another, another. That had been my life. More, more, more, and when done more would be done. It was never enough. Nothing was.
I was set with two new show programs and I would be skating at the Sun Valley ice shows once a week for three months. The roller coaster ride would never stop. I was literally spinning my way from one continent to another,into one situation to another, into one disaster to another. I would go on my own since we wanted me to grow my own wings and Sun Valley would be the beginning of a new life — hopefully a wonderful new life.
The trip to Sun Valley was a long one, as if life did not want to take me there, and making all the stopovers a chance for me to turn back. But I would not. At long last I arrived at what would be my new home for the next three months. I was excited to be on my own and I didn’t feel scared or lost just because my map had no route and no destination. I was actually quite excited to be in the spotlight once more and not have the pressure of judges. It was a world I knew and I could now express all my raw emotions on the ice. I liked my new programs and liked that I did not have to skate by the rules.
The shows were fun and different than I had experienced before. It was enchanting to skate outdoors under the moonlight and spotlight, confusing as to which was which, amusingly similar to how life or I looked upon me as well. To have the spectators on their candle-lit dinner tables watching us made us feel prestigious, yet hungry. Hungry for more in life. Hungry for a real life and not one of caged imprisonment. You could feel that you were part of the history of old Hollywood and old skating stars alike. You were walking in their footsteps.
The first few weeks with all the excitement and hype around me were enticing, but I was getting very lonely and the shows became very repetitive. I called my mother and father a couple times a day and cried on the phone. It reminded me of when I went to skating camp in Japan, on the phone crying for help with my only lifeline. I was still in pain and not happy. Other skaters were coming in and out for the shows, and the dance and pair-teams had each other, but I was the only one who stayed for the three months and had absolutely no family in all of America, and no friends, and I was lonely.
No matter how much admiration I received on the ice from my skating, no matter how many fans came just to see me skate, no matter how much fan mail I received, nothing could give me comfort like a hug from my mother or father. I felt my agent did not really care about me either, and I felt I had been transplanted from one zoo to another and this one made me pace back and forth. It felt like he had just plopped me there expecting me to just adjust and figure everything out. I was at a complete loss for words and movement.
My agent did not visit me and my parents could not come till later in August. Every day I went to the post office and there was a care package from my mother from Dubai. Every single day. It was incredible! I would walk to the post office with a frown and emerge with a smile. There were cards and gifts filled with a piece of my mother’s heart. I missed her terribly and my mother missed me too. That is the only thing that made me smile each day. Going to the post office to open the surprise package all the way from half way around the world was the excitement of my day. I read and reread all the cards over and over again. I placed them all around my apartment. I was turning twenty-one that summer and I had still not broken away from my mother and father. I had still not gone through that separation. It was much later in life than when most girls go through it. In the life we had led we were completely dependent on each other, so much that when separated we felt the other part of ourselves had been lost. We did not know how to survive without each other. I had nowhere to turn.
I was also dealing with my recurrent stomach infection. Since leaving China when I had first contracted it, I had been on many bouts of antibiotics for it, each doctor finding and treating another infection and perhaps another virus or bacteria in my stomach. Luckily as time passed the extreme pain and symptoms I had had from China healed, but now my symptoms seemed to be stemming from elsewhere and just manifested into feeling a constant nonstop mild nausea with severe headaches. I was dizzy all the time. My ears felt blocked all day and I had flu symptoms that wouldn’t get worse or any better. I was in pain from my knee and back injury. My neck hurt. My shoulder injury had started to flare up again. In this state how could I enjoy skating, let alone everyday life? Where was this all coming from?
The one-hour time that I was on the ice for the show was great, but during the rest of the week being alone was worse than knowing how good the show was. The strange contrast between performing in front of an audience of hundreds that are sitting in darkness while you are under a spotlight and all alone in the light unable to see anything, was extreme. I went to the juice bar in town and told my friend I needed the help of his psychic friend. I was desperate. I was troubled about a few things and they were total polar opposites of each other. I had to basically decide if I wanted to stay amateur (meaning compete at the Grand Prix, the World Figure Skating Championships, and the Olympics) or turn professional and do shows, tours around the world, and at that time there were quite a few professional competitions too.
It was the hardest decision of my life so far. It felt like being eight years old all over again when I had to decide between ballet and skating. I was torn. I was torn because of my injuries and physical health and I was torn because I still had not had the Olympic experience. If I turned professional that dream would be dead and dormant once and for all. In my heart I truly wanted to remain an amateur. I wanted to compete and have that tight relationship with my mother and coach and have that excitement of preparing for a competition. It was the only life I knew.
Yet I knew I couldn’t do my jumps because of the pain I was in. I also did not like the show life and I had always said I never wanted to be a show pony. Yet I thought I owed it to my parents to use my spinning to do something with what I had. My agent laid more guilt on me by saying I owed it to my parents and could pay them back one day with all the money they had spent on me like a flowing river if I turned professional. Nice dream! To add to the problem, if I wanted to stay amateur and compete I wanted to do so only if I could train with my Chinese coach. He had left China and for whatever reason, was now in Tokyo. We had moved nonstop for skating and we really felt, coming to our senses, that to then move back to Japan to train with him with all my injuries and illness was just not worth it. Could we really just go on and on like an energizer bunny, not only spending all our money but also really wanting to fight once more only to find myself in dire situations? What was this worth? I had my spins. Why not use them? I did not need any more medals to perform with the rest of the world and Olympic champions. I was lucky.
My agent could not understand my confusion with it all. He pushed and pushed and I felt cornered. For me it was so hard to give up the Olympic dream, and then on the other side of the spectrum even today I can’t f
orgive myself for spinning for money. I just felt so dirty. I felt that receiving money for something that was so sacred to me ruined everything. It would ruin my spins, my soul, and my life. I felt this deep inside of me. I felt I was selling my body and I felt I was doing something terrible. Spins were to be done at times like a prayer, not to be done over and over again like a machine on autopilot! I did not seem to see however how the spins were making everyone else so happy.
I had also wanted to model. When I was younger in Japan I did some modeling at the young age of about nine and I had loved it so much. I loved dressing up. But then skating took over and there was no time for my other interests. As I grew up I also knew my mother detested modeling and for her only skating was to be honored. I was scared to bring up anything unrelated to skating in case my mother would erupt at me. I knew she did not want me to have any distraction that would disrupt my skating career. Now that I was alone I thought I had the chance to explore modeling and entered a modeling contest that I saw in one of the fashion magazines. I snail mailed my application.
My mother arrived in Sun Valley in late August as the shows were ending and decisions were to be made. As my luck would have it, the answer from the modeling competition came in the mail while my mother was there. She opened the mail and saw that I had been accepted to quite a big modeling agency and she became furious. She hit me a lot that day. I cried and cried, not so much because of the hitting but because I tried so hard to understand my mother and I couldn’t. I never seemed to be able to make my mother proud of me unless I was spinning. Spinning my own web of confinement. If it breaks, start over and spin another web.
The summer shows ended and we decided to go to where my agent was living in Hackensack, New Jersey for a while. We needed more time to decide on my future and my mother saw how devastated I was with everything. We decided not to make a final decision then and there and just to see how the months progressed. We thought perhaps I could do shows while still leaving the amateur ranks open for me. What we did decide was that for me to return to Japan was out of the question. It was too insane an idea for nothing tangible. We would stay in the States. We were in the dark concerning not only my future but also even the present. Something would reveal itself soon enough. My life seemed to be out of my hands. I was powerless and so was my mother. We decided to run with the tide. We had no more wishes, no more goals, no more wants. We were more than exhausted. It was the end of any certainty.
12
Broken Wing
(HACKENSACK, TOURING THE WORLD, DUBAI)
Humans need to suffer to become angels.
Just as I started to have my wings grow they would be clipped. I believe everything happens for a reason and I do believe that every situation, every person in your life, is a lesson in disguise. There is never a moment that is not a lesson. I too believe that blessings can come in many shapes and forms. They can be concealed, and in life one ought not to make a judgment on anything or anybody since you never know what lies beneath that disguise. You might miss out on a chance and sometimes what you are looking for is not what you ultimately want, but what you finally get, if you let the universe do its work, is actually what you wanted all along. Those that can learn from life every second have truly mastered the notion of living in the “now.” We are all too busy always pondering what happened in the past and working for what “will” we truly always miss what is happening in the present.
Months passed by, and as I was training in Hackensack, New Jersey and still debating my decision, I was also traveling all around the world for amateur skating shows. With my traveling and my name growing in fame, I had many suitors here and there, but I was not interested. I was really not in that space for a relationship. I had so many life-changing and challenging events happening to me simultaneously that I was not available and not open to love. I also was again going through serious bouts of what appeared to be the stomach virus or bacterial infection and I was in and out of hospital emergency rooms every week. It was getting very serious and rounds of antibiotics were doing more harm than good. But at last a stroke of good luck would come.
A big opportunity arose from invitation to me to attend the World Professional Championships held in Washington, D.C. in 2000. It was definitely an honor to receive such an invitation and my agent cautioned us not to turn this down. It would, however, turn me professional and training for the Olympics would then become just a distant memory. This invitation was the turning point and the deciding factor. Only five ladies were invited to this competition each year and usually only those of Olympic or world gold medal status. For me to be wanted there, was pretty huge. I felt a rush of excitement and I felt this was a sign from up above. I did not want to pass this one by, and so it was decided for me to turn professional upon accepting this invitation.
It turned out to be a stupendous decision. It opened doors for me like never before, but with my health problems I could not accept most of them. Many doors would be closed due to my failing health. I would, however, always have a chip on my shoulder about never having been given even the chance of becoming an Olympian. I had done everything I could have in the world of skating, but to realize that I would never be able to say I was an Olympian would always make me sad.
I skated incredibly well at the 2000 World Professional Figure Skating Championships. I was in my element. I needed to do only a few jumps and I could spin and be as artistic as I wanted. I had standing ovations and performing in front of thousands of people was incredible. I loved it, and while I had never received the perfect score of 6.0 in amateur figure skating competitions, I now received at the professional level many perfect scores of 10! I was the Hallmark video of the day. I got many offers, but once again not really intended for me to accept since at that time I was not American and they were obliged to first use their American champions. I was at the bottom of the totem pole concerning endorsements. We did however have many different agents come up to us who wanted to represent me. But what truly are agents other than people wanting some of your money? I wished to have open doors leading to glorious opportunities, not agents hunting us down and closing the doors behind us!
The best part of this competition other than coming back with a bronze medal was that my parents and I were invited to the White House for lunch. The speechwriter at that time to President George W. Bush had been at the competition and was so enthralled with me and my skating that he personally invited me to come. I was elated. I had met him and his colleagues at the after-party and they were ecstatic over me. I felt like my spins had brought happiness and I could not have been more happy. More than for me, I could not wait to give the gift to my mother and father of a visit to the most important house in America. What an honor it was. We gladly and gratefully accepted. We visited the White House in December 2000 for a private tour and a wonderful lunch. We could not have been more thankful for such an amazing and memorable experience hosted by such gracious people of the government.
At the time I turned professional the world of ice skating was not too distressing. Of course it not as wonderful as when it hit an all-time media frenzy in the 1990s but it was definitely much better than it is now. There were tons of tours and shows all around the world available to us, which is different from now. I was invited to do some skating shows over Christmas and New Years’ in the Caribbean islands that were produced by a famous male French champion. I had never been away from my family on Christmas day and was not too sure how I would handle it all, but I felt it was time for me to take the opportunities to grow stronger mentally and in my skating experiences as well. The young skaters that grow up in America have many chances to do shows, perform showcases, and have the chance to skate under spotlights, but where I had grown up in Asia there were no such opportunities. I also wanted to get used to traveling back and forth, living out of suitcases and being able to perform my best even in a second’s notice.
So off I was to the islands. It was an experience to journal. It was incredibly scorch
ing hot on these islands. After all it was the Caribbean. I am not at all much of a beach person. Mountains and snow please my senses far more than the sticky sun and sand, and even more so during holiday time, so I stayed in my hotel room for the most part and read a lot.
Also, touring is not what you might expect it to be. The skaters that are pair or dance teams stick to themselves since they have each other. Skaters of the same country stick to each other while speaking their native language and they tour so much together that there isn’t much space to give freely to a newcomer. I did not belong to any nation so I was different and separate. I also am totally to blame for some of this isolation. I had become very insecure and apologetic in my life and with myself. I’d rather hide in the corner avoiding conflict and liked to sit behind everyone so I had a clear view of what was going on and have no fear of someone behind me stabbing me in the back. I also did not really know how to socialize. So they saw me as the spoiled one instead of seeing my shortcomings. It stems from the constant fear I grew up with that everyone was against me and having been always an outcast. Having been treated always so differently I ceased to expect anything else.
With my stomach never feeling right and my never feeling in my optimal health, I was scared I would catch even something more serious when in the Caribbean. I was very careful with the water and fruits and ate only grilled food or fruit I could peel myself. I was living in constant fear of my health. I was not feeling well at all and would never wake up feeling refreshed. I was lonely on this tour since my family was celebrating Christmas day all together and I was alone in my room most of the time with no Christmas tree to peer upon and let me escape into my fairy tale world. Again I felt my agent did not understand me. But who ultimately did? Not even I understood myself.
