by Lucinda Ruh
The show itself was unique. These were islands, so figure skating was the last thing the natives thought about, let alone had even heard about. Ice to them was definitely foreign other than having ice cubes in their drinks. I think they thought these were strange people who had arrived bringing frozen ice with people skating on it to their island of paradise! I don’t know if it was the smartest idea, but for sure it was something that had never been done before and would never be done again! When we arrived the team was setting up the ice.
They had put water down with a refrigeration system and were waiting for it to freeze. There was a meek attempt at having a tent-like cover over the ice surface so that the sun’s heat would not beat on the ice directly and reduce it to a puddle of water! When the show started the cover would be lifted. We had to wait two days until the ice was ready for us to skate on. It was hilarious when just after a few minutes of our skating and jumping on the very thin ice surface, the holes we created, both big and small, caused the pipes to explode. They were exploding everywhere. The ice surface was incredibly small already and now we had mini fountain springs all over the place. It became dangerous and we tried skating in and out to avoid them.
The team tried to fix them, but soon as one was fixed another pipe would break somewhere else. It was complete disorder. The shows were starting that evening and there was no way there was enough time in the heat to freeze a new sheet of ice and also no way the shows could be canceled. Also as the night darkened, we would not be able to see where these little water springs were when we were skating and we could get seriously injured.
So the team decided to put potted plants on the ice on top of each and every broken pipe! It felt like I was skating in a garden! It was funny as well as frustrating because these potted plants were not lit and we had only an approximate calculation of where they were. I was worried that when under the spotlight I would skate right into them and fall on my face! As far as the spectators I was not so worried, because for them if you just did a single jump or an easy spin it was Olympic material to them. So I smiled and put on a show face and on I skated. Luckily no one was seriously hurt. For every show we had for those few days more and more potted plants were placed on the ice! By the end there were more green areas than white. We were hopping over the pots. I was relieved when the shows were over and it was time to go home. I was melancholy because I had missed a family Christmas for this tour. I didn’t know if it was worth it.
Show life was very different from what I had been used to and how I had been trained from the age of four. There was no structure. No regimen. No support, no goals. No real training. It was just trying to keep at the level you were since there was no time for improving. It was sleeping in one hotel to the next, from one city to another, skating under one spotlight to another. It felt like a circus on the road, but more prestigious, with more money invested in the production. And our wishes were to be granted to a certain extent. I was lucky, however, because in some skating tours the skaters are treated terribly. I was on the best and most honored tours in the world so I couldn’t complain. I was treated like a star. I was a star. Some productions were incredibly produced with top-rated lighting and fans worldwide followed the entertainment. To see them so happy made it all worthwhile.
Even some travels to the shows were stupendous as well. After I did a show in the early evening in New York City I was taken by limousine to the helicopter pad and taken by helicopter to the next show where I performed later that evening. We were almost waited on hand and foot. After all, the success of each show was a direct result of how happy the skaters were with the production and whether we would want to skate on that specific tour again, and so our happiness was the producers first concern. And, oh my, did some skaters take great advantage of it! Later on, one of the tours I was part of was conducted the whole time by a private jet. Yes, I was living the life, but was I really? For me to be content in life I need to be stimulated mentally and spiritually as well, and that part of my soul was hungry. Very hungry.
As I kept on touring, all these troubles and my unhappiness mounted and I was stuck in a rut. My back hurt nonstop. I dealt with it by taking painkillers every day. My stomach pains were terrible and I was eating less and less. I was so limited as to what I could eat that my diet remained very imbalanced. Basically I was eating only fruit when I was on the road since most of the food served was not to my liking. I also wanted to stay thin so I just ate certain food groups. I was very strict and disciplined with myself as I had been all my life. I never ever gave in to myself and punished myself for every mistake I made. I was still tearing out my eyes lashes and eyebrows out and picking my skin until I bled, but hid it all too well. I was not calm and not in my element.
One of my next tours was in France. I never went on the practice ice, not even once for the two week tour. I couldn’t. I was too weak, tired, and unwell. I stayed in the tour bus’s bed all day until a half hour before the show started. Then I would drag myself to the rink and into my costumes, paint my makeup on as well as my smile, and push myself through the show. I almost fainted each time I finished my solo performance. I trudged on. The other skaters were not my friends. The tour’s organization was a mess as well. It was France after all! The show never started on time, not ever. The bus driver sometimes would even drive intoxicated. We hit so many lampposts on the way it was ridiculous. I am not sure the bus driver was even qualified to drive but in France anything goes!
A new experience for me as well was that skaters were drinking and smoking a lot on the tour. I had always been in such a “clean” and “good girl” environment with my mother that this felt all too uncomfortable and too real for me. I liked my dream world better. Starting relationships with others while on tour was also very new for me to understand. I was single and I had too many other issues at hand that were far beyond the dating world. I thought it rude and inappropriate for skaters to hook up randomly with others in the bus, but I closed my eyes and ears and just tried to rest so I would be well enough to survive another day. My issue was survival, not if someone liked me or not.
Also, having been so sheltered my whole life, I had never been exposed to such behavior. I did not belong there. I did not fit in their world. I had expected that skaters like me, having worked so hard all our lives, would be so appreciative of the new life of being a star. Instead, their mentality was that they needed to take it all with them as long as it lasted and they would step over anyone if needed. Their greed mounted; they took advantage of the situation and of people and were rude and pushy. I did not feel it was my place to say anything so I just watched, observed, and stayed quiet. They might have thought I was the dumb and weak one but I’d rather they looked at me that way than enter their world. Maybe I was crazy and they were sane but I had always preferred being my crazy to their normal. It was such a pity I never could enjoy my own skating.
The German tour was next. I did not want to give up. Germany was another three weeks of shows. I seriously did not know if I would be able to pull through when I was so sick. It was the same tour that I had performed with right after the 1999 World Championships in Helsinki and where I had so much success. I loved the producers and tour manager of this tour and was excited to see them again. To my dismay the tour did not feel the same and it was not the producers but the skaters who had changed. It was not the same group and once again I was alone. I talked only to the producer and the tour manager and otherwise just stuck to myself. I was becoming even more unwell. I was nauseous every single day for twenty-four hours. I was very, very skinny, but I still thought I wasn’t skinny enough, and I hardly ate anything.
The producer called my mother asking her if I was all right and if I had an eating disorder. I did not. There were some skaters on the tour who did, though, and my roommate for the tour was one of them. She had stacks of candy, chips, and chocolate hidden under the beds in each hotel room. She would not eat anything in front of other people, but then would binge on all the snacks
she had hidden and then she would throw everything up. I was so sick I couldn’t eat. That made me skinny enough. Maybe unconsciously it had become my psychological weapon as well.
On this tour I was more in hospitals and doctors’ offices than on the ice. The tour manager was an incredibly wonderful man and he accompanied me to all the hospitals holding my hand. I was scared and he was my support. We were in the eastern part of Germany and my sickness was getting so awful that they arranged for me to get an upper endoscopy to see if I had an ulcer or something worse. I was hesitant to go to just any doctor but I trusted the producer. We entered the hospital. It looked like a building that had just barely survived the war. I am glad it was still standing when we exited. The inside was barren. Nobody and nothing was around. It was completely quiet and desolate. The atmosphere was as if a bomb siren had just gone off and everyone was hiding underground.
One nurse directed us to an empty room where I was instructed to lie down. I was shaking and fearful of what was to come as the manager held my hand. The doctor entered and without saying anything took this long, very thick black tube and was about to jab it down my throat. I yelped and said I needed a minute to breathe first. The doctor waited a minute and the manager tried to calm me down. I wasn’t given any sedative nor was my throat numbed. I realized he was going to put it all the way down my throat! I panicked but did not know any better and just thought I needed to be brave. I figured it was always done like this.
When the doctor slid the tube down my throat and all the way to my stomach it was so painful and I felt like I wasn’t able to breathe. My manager could barely watch as he squeezed my hand. The doctor had been looking at the images the camera at the end of the tube was taking. He told us he did not see anything abnormal and walked out. That was it.
I have been often misdiagnosed by medical doctors. I don’t know quite why, but I am sure it helped to make me a very strong person. I barely finished the tour. I had to save just enough energy all day to survive my solos and be able to pull through to endure it all. I just made it to the finish line. But not one other skater knew of my dilemma nor did the audience. I covered it all so well. When done I was so depleted I could barely utter a word. My body just collapsed. I decided I would go to my parents to be in Dubai until I became well. I could not wait to fall into the arms of my parents and keep my skates at bay.
My parents, understanding my pain and hearing how sick I was, had tried to persuade me to stop the tour and come back earlier. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had given up, no matter the consequence. I would have rather died skating then stopping to heal myself. For me it would be more honorable to go that way than to have said I needed to rest to get well. I see now that my psychology then sounds so totally upside down, but at that time I did not know any better. Skating was my life and the actual skating I loved and even though I was too sick to skate I felt I would be even more sick without it. At least that is what I felt like, and so it could be classified as an addiction. Withdrawing from anything that is done repeatedly to make you feel good in a disillusioned way may be more painful at first, but will always be worth it in the long run by curing you from the inside out.
But I did not know any of this then. The way I was continuing to live my life, by just digging my own hole of illness deeper and deeper, I ended up denying myself my own happiness. For any wound to be cured you must admit to having it first. I was nowhere near realizing my dangerous fascination with spinning to escape my pain from life. That realization would be a long time coming. What would it take to wake me up? I am lucky I did not die in the process.
13
Deadly Frozen
(DUBAI, TOKYO, HACKENSACK)
To be or not to be. Dying is simple compared to creating and being something that will live forever.
I never wore watches. As a young child, curiously enough, I had never wanted to. I never wanted to know what time it was. Maybe it was because my whole life was running and rushing by and against it, never with or within it. Everything was calculated by what time it was and what time I needed to be where, as if time made me suddenly visible. I could never be too early or too late. I had to always be on time. Everything was measured by that round object with little hands moving in a clockwise direction going around and around. I saw it to be pointless, but much more importantly I did not want to imprint the time in my body. I did not want the time to rule me and therefore become a slave to it. Why should I be a slave to something that was only relevant to the little place where you lived? You moved a little east, west, north or south and it would be a different time. To me it is irrelevant and petty in the whole world scheme of things.
To me time is insignificant. It does not exist. No one can tell you what time it really is at the moment because the minute they say it, it is already in the past and there is a new time. It is like never living in the now. I don’t want something in my life that is not real to be my dictator. I have given up time.
When I used to spin, time stopped. It had no significance. It did not matter what time it was. Time stood still. That is how I want to live my life. Don’t you realize when you are having the time of your life you do not care what time it is? You only look at your watch when you feel it’s time to stop whatever you were doing to do something else.
Feeling unwell, I arrived in Dubai. It would be my first time there. It was the early summer of 2001. My parents had lived there for about one year. The airport was inviting and there was a sense of newness, excitement in the air, and it flooded people’s veins. Upon arrival everyone seemed to have the urgency to explore the land beyond the airport as quickly as they could. They all seemed in the biggest rush to get out of there. I did not rush. I explored the airport first. Airports to me, having travelled so much, have always given me the first glimpse and first insight into the land beyond the building walls. It mirrors the whole culture of the people in this one space, in the food, in the mannerisms of the people, in the smells, in the attitudes of security check point personnel, and in what you observe in the luggage claim area. You can size up a whole country just by their airports. They are fascinating to me and I love them. I took my time and visited the restroom. I was so elated to see they had one stall like there was in Japan with the hole in the ground. I excitedly chose that one. I felt a slice of Japan in the most intimate settings. I smiled.
To my surprise the place where my parents lived and still live to this day, has a rooftop pool on the thirty-first floor and an ice rink on the first floor. The same molecules in liquid and in frozen form are each on different spectrums of the earth. How ironic. The liquid to the heavens and the frozen deeply rooted in the earth. The pool was to my delight, but the ice rink was to my dismay. Every time I passed it I would feel guilty not to be on it practicing. I had to force myself to not go on the ice and really let my body heal and relax.
I did, however, succumb to my spinning addiction. Once again it truly felt like I was a show for people to watch. Since I felt uncomfortable skating and spinning in all my positions in public in such tight unitards that denied people any illusions about body movement, I covered myself up and spun in sweatshirts and baggy pants. I was incredibly skinny and pale and ghostly compared to all the beautifully tanned foreigners who had been basking in the sun’s rays. I truly looked like I had been in a refrigerator for a while, and I had. A frozen container with all the delights, good and evil, at people’s fingertips to become addicted to, was truly a depiction of an ice rink!
Needless to say, I was not well. I could not eat much and I was weak. I was continually having flu-like symptoms that were getting worse. I feel ridiculous about listing all my ailments, but let me put it this way. It would be much easier to say what part of my body was well. Maybe my little toe. Actually no,since I had broken one as well, and it was actually still swollen. I was contemplating stopping skating once more. I did not enjoy, to say it nicely, the tours. I did not enjoy the traveling and living out of suitcases. I knew so many peopl
e and so many people knew of me, yet I did not have even one friend I could turn to. My mother and father were all I had. Please understand that I am not complaining, but it caused a lot of my problems that there was no one outside my circle who could clearly judge my situation. I had totally lost my joy for skating. Skating had become torture for me when I was so sick. I could not enjoy the moments on the ice. It was survival and not skating. Something needed to be done.
My parents suspected that a lot of my illness was again mind over matter and were confident that if I were happy my illness and all my physical torment would go away. But how would they be able to make me happy if I could not do that for myself, and the one thing that was making me unhappy I would not let go of? It is clear now but then, oh boy, was it confusing.
After a month or so I mentioned how I really wanted to go to Japan to see my Chinese teacher. I thought that maybe he would be able to rekindle the fire within me to skate again and as always I thought skating would cure me. I realize now I should have stayed in one spot longer to get myself grounded but my family and I were so used to packing up and leaving and trying to fix things by “doing” instead of “letting go” that I was off to Japan not long after I arrived in Dubai. We were always up and running, feeling guilty and lazy the minute we sat down. Our minds would always be running hundreds of miles an hour. Sitting down rarely done in our family and if we were to sit I would have to exercise my brain. Not one minute was to be wasted.
