by Lucinda Ruh
What I thought of as my recurring “flu” got worse at a certain point in the middle of the tour. I was used to it by then, but I was so sick with a bout of the serious influenza type of illness that as I would spin the fluids would flow from my tear ducts and I wouldn’t be able to see clearly for the rest of the time I was on the ice.
It was one disaster after another. I was a human just surviving. I did and do believe that through sickness the soul is rejuvenated and there is a reason for illness. My body, the vehicle, was failing, but at the same time I knew and felt my soul was starting to heal and come alive. Just how long would I have to be sick? I told myself, “Well I had made myself sick from the age of nine and that was now so many years ago? So it might take a few years to recuperate.” If I did not have that belief so engrained in me I don’t know what I would have done.
Believing is power and that belief kept me alive. It was like I knew and felt things would soon be incredibly good. I just did not know when. Patience would be my lesson. It did not feel like I was climbing a never ever-ending mountain. It felt like I was in the deepest hole and just kept dropping further and further into the darkness, and until I would drop so deep into the earth that I would come out of it on the other side, I needed to search deeper into my mind, heart, and soul. Deeper into the meaning of life and its purpose. Deeper into my destiny. No richer does health seem to someone than when they become sick.
Most of the other skaters on tour seemed so balanced — balanced in life, in their demeanor, and their eating habits. They seemed so normal. I was not normal for sure, and so physically off-balance that it astonished me I could keep my balance so well on the ice and in my spins. But I was clumsy off-ice, bumping into things and dropping stuff all the time. Maybe the spinning was catching up to my health and me. My male skating friend mentioned to me that in order not to be dizzy I must spin in the other direction off-ice to unwind my body. I never did, but now looking back perhaps I should have. Perhaps it might have saved me from a lot of trouble. The spinning was winding me up like a doll, and my brain was in such a twirl that I was feeling like I was spinning off-ice as well. My brain felt like it never stopped spinning.
Sometimes on off-days individual skaters were called to do press releases in the cities coming up. On one such occasion when I was called I had to fly to Texas from California for a one day television and radio media press junket. I was excited since I loved appearing before the media but I was exhausted. I arrived in Texas in the evening and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and at the breakfast table I fainted. This time I was revived quickly and I did not need to go to the hospital, but once again memories surfaced and all day I was in fear. That evening I flew back to California and the tour continued. I am sure someone in the team must have heard of what happened but no one said anything and I felt they did not care. As the tour progressed my fainting spells often recurred. Strangely, they repeatedly happened around 2:00 a.m. I would fall asleep after a show and then awake about two hours later, white as a sheet, sick to my stomach, and the room would be spinning. I would drift in and out of consciousness and they would call the hotel doctor.
It was frightening and I felt I had no one to turn to or to take care of me. My parents were back in Dubai and I had no family in the U.S. It happened so often that it would change my life forever. I had no idea how significant these occasions were. The fact that no one helped me terrified me as well. I remember one specific time the doctor asked if someone from the group could sleep in my room with me in case of another emergency and to check on me when I was so ill. Although I was embarrassed to say I was unwell and ask for help, I called several people from the team but no one wanted to lend a hand. The feeling of being all alone and sick was alarming. The fear started to live in me, in my veins and in my heart. These fainting spells were scarier than you can imagine, and that they were real and not a part of my imagination was paralyzing to me. My life was turned into a kind of explosive despair.
In June my touring was over for the time being. No matter what was good or bad during the tour, the members of the skating tour would become my family for a lifetime, and for that I am extremely grateful. It made me a part of a fabulous entity of people that in one way or another would always support me and be a part of my soul. It decorated my life with the celebration of a way of life and I can only be thankful for that time. The adrenaline had kept me going, and now that the tour was finished I collapsed in a big heap on returning to my home in New York. My mother had come back from Dubai to wait for my arrival. I needed her. I was in such a dire state I needed my mother desperately. By now I was scared to death to fall asleep alone. My mother would have to hold my hand and sleep next to me. I was so afraid of falling asleep and then never awaking or waking up and fainting. I cannot tell you how scared I was. I was more scared then when my mother hit me and more frightened than when I competed in front of millions. I had never been this scared but it was only when it was time to fall asleep. Not yet did this fear overtake me at any other time of the day.
I needed a break from skating and took a few weeks of just roaming the city and enjoying all the life and culture it had to offer. I walked and walked for hours at a time. Although it felt as if the atmosphere in New York had changed dramatically since 9/11 it still was bountiful with energy and sophistication, hustle and bustle, and a feast for the shopping eye. I had fun during the day, but in the evenings the fear would creep over me. It was a terrible time, only to get worse.
During this time I finally underwent many tests for my ailments but doctors could not find anything significant other than total exhaustion, not realizing that this was a very significant diagnosis. Yet they were baffled by my poor health. The more the doctors were baffled the more I became absolutely terrified throughout the day about fainting. I felt so weak that I felt like I could faint at any minute. Both the brain and the body were working together against me, or actually they were trying to tell me something but I had shut down so much I did not want to hear it. Which came first? The body or the mind? I think in my case it was a mixture of both from years and years ago. Maybe one of my injuries had caused pain, which caused fear, which caused more injury and illness. Or maybe the fear and emotional pain was first and they caused injury and more pain and illness.
It hindered me so much that by the end of the summer I could not go anywhere without holding my mother’s hand. Otherwise I would burst into tears, my body would freeze and I would just collapse. Miraculously I continued with skating. This was the wrong thing to do when skating conflicts were the basic cause of my misery, but not wanting to give up the one thing in my life I still had, I had to continue. It’s not like it was giving me more joy but it was making me feel like I was accomplishing something. I felt there would be no life if I stopped, yet ironically I had no life continuing with skating, either.
The next season of 2002 to 2003 I toured the world with shows and performances. National Geographic interviewed me for a whole hour show about my spins. They had professors and scientists from all the top New York City universities who came to the rink as I did my spins to try to explain the phenomenon of my talent. It was a very interesting television documentary, but with no interesting outcome or explanation of my spinning ability. Maybe my spinning was meant to be a magical secret from the heavens after all! It felt more sacred that way and I was glad that my spins were not explained in terms that withheld magic.
Up and down my emotions went and my ailments remained. During some shows I was too tired to want to go and I would cry in desperation. But once on the ice my smile went on, my spins were faster than ever, and I had standing ovations. I was an actress in my own movie and a good one. No one knew what I was living through and it was kept that way to keep the fascination of my role alive. As long as I skated, that would be my role. Everyone wanted me to spin.
The most wonderful show was the 9/11 memorial at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I had attended numerous performances at this stadium yet each t
ime destiny brought me there it felt very special. The reason for the show was so beautiful and the New York Rangers joined the skaters. Times like these were memorable. My fear would not be with me while performing, because most of the time when on the ice I felt like I left my body anyway, and it was not really me skating. The fear, however, would be with me before I got on the ice and right back after I got off the ice. I would eventually have problems with performing, but for this time I had a slice of peace while skating. I could push the fear aside with my focus on what I had to do.
Since my mother understood that, she thought it was best for me to keep on skating so I could just push my fear to the side. But what we did not realize was that it was still there and one day it would inch its way back to the center to erupt like a volcano. My mother had to come with me everywhere. I refused to go anywhere without her. The money I received from all my touring and skating would never amount to what my parents had spent on me. Either because I never had anyone standing up for me or I was not an Olympic gold medalist my salary was not one to brag about. The amount compared to the stardom I was getting was actually usually quite hurtful because I did not feel appreciated. Compared to what others got I can only imagine the difference. The money we were spending for my mother to accompany me everywhere, even on the German tour I participated in for the third time, hardly made the money I earned from my work seem worthwhile. But I was not in it for money. I actually despised getting money for selling my spins. It felt cheap.
The state of my stomach was terrible and I was still on rounds of antibiotics, but now I had also visited a doctor in New York City who had treated the Pope! I thought this man of such stature could definitely cure me. Many more antibiotics and medicine was administrated to me but I feel the real cause was not being administered and I don’t know if I felt any better. The state of my back was terrible and I was in so much pain. I could barely walk at this point and I cried before and after each show just bearing the pain. I could not practice. My mother and I decided we needed to finally get, after all this time, a second opinion on my back and my hips.
We then visited a famous orthopedic surgeon in New York City where we finally received a true diagnosis of my spinal condition. I had to take MRIs and numerous X-rays. When the results came in and he sat us down. He told us seriously and sternly that I would need urgent surgery. He said he could tell I had previously had a huge spinal fracture. And now, because I had continued to skate, I had two discs and three bones that were all crushed together, and there could be even more serious damage to my back. I had big bone tears in both hips as well. In fact, he said, he did not see how I could walk. On hearing this, I fainted. I was in shock, especially since I had skated all this time with such a serious injury and that worse things could have happened to me. I felt so thick-headed to have continued skating when in such great pain, but that had never stopped me before so why would it have stopped me then?
The doctor then looked at the old pictures I had with me from Switzerland and said sadly I had been wrongly diagnosed. I should have been treated properly and not allowed to be back on the ice until the original fracture from my fall had fully healed. My mother and I had no words, or tears. We were dried up.
I can’t believe now, however, that I still continued to skate after his devastating diagnosis. For some reason this wasn’t a big enough wake up call for me. After several talks my mother and I decided against surgery. Now we wanted more opinions. Whenever the news was bad we did not believe it, and when it was good we did. That was the way we went through life.
Everyone in the skating world knows my mother. They know her to be the sweetest and most honorable skating-mother ever. Just recently I bumped into an old ABC director who has known me since I was little and she told me she loves my mother. She said she was the best skating-mother she had ever known. My mother was loved in the skating world for her generosity and kindness and blunt truthfulness. Truth is written all over her. She would hug other skaters and even compliment them in front of me. I only wanted her compliments for me but I respected her honesty. Others saw our strong bond and envied it. But now the situation was different. My mother was now with me not just for support but because I could not be alone for one second. The fear was that powerful, that engulfing, that enraging. It is one hundred percent paralyzing to the body, brain, heart, and soul. To top it off I was still fainting.
Once you have lived with a fear of this magnitude that stops you from being able to do most things in your daily life you never want to talk about it. You feel other people will not understand and you do not want to be belittled. Skaters started to tease me and mock me being now twenty-two years old and still attached at the hip with my mother. And so I lived with the mockery and gossip and no one knew the truth except my mother and it was a secret so heavy to carry it would break me into pieces.
April 3, 2003, would mark a big day for me and I would be given a label for all the hard work I had endured, but as it did not bring magic to my spins it did however bring me a sense of pride and great accomplishment. It was the day I had my name printed in the Guinness Book of World Records. That day I made the first attempt to win a record for spinning on NBC’s Today Show. The previous record that I would have to beat for spinning duration was sixty rotations on one foot continuously without changing feet or starting over. I had been on many morning shows throughout my skating career and it did not faze me that millions would be watching. I loved it and I did not feel any pressure since I was confident in my talent. What did scare me a little, however, was the ice condition and the fast wind that was blowing that morning. It was freezing and the ice was very uneven and choppy.
The wind was blowing me in all directions but I became world-famous as the world’s longest spinner with one hundred and five rotations to only later that day at Chelsea Piers NY, beat my own record and bumped it up to one hundred and fifteen continuous rotations on one foot! It was a great success and gave me great happiness of doing something considered the best in the world. It was documented and would be a part of history forever. I wanted also do the fastest spin per second since I have been clocked at six rotations a second, but I was told at that time there was no category for this feat. I know my parents were and are very proud of me but for me nothing was ever good enough and the minute I achieved that I was on the hunt for the next thing to accomplish. It was a never ending trail to self-destruction because I would never be perfect and perfection is what I was striving for.
During that summer of 2003 I turned twenty-four years old and the clock was ticking. I had not evolved into my own person. I actually had become less independent, more dependent on my mother, back to being a child who could not fend for herself. I was panic-stricken and sick. Once again, the only way I knew how to deal with everything was to leave. 9/11 had also in many ways traumatized me and I could not bear living in the forsaken area of New York any longer. I wanted to go far, far away. In my heart I wanted to go to Mongolia and sit on top of a mountain and just do nothing. I wanted to live in my own world of meditation and just breathe and be reborn once again. But after all my parents and I had been through, for me to escape that far away sounded ridiculous. However, a tangible place like Los Angeles seemed okay to consider.
I was not afraid of fainting and dying. I was afraid of living. I was afraid to be who I was. I was not afraid of being mediocre, I was afraid of having power beyond measure. I was afraid I would erupt and destroy everything around me with my strength. I was so used to living a life of feeling powerless that I did not know what would happen if I did wake up my powers. The disgust I had for myself for not being who I truly was made me feel so angry that it scared me. I was afraid to live my own truth and I was afraid of my own body.
16
Stars In or Out of Line?
(LOS ANGELES, HAWAII, DUBAI)
If you continually hesitate with your next move you will stand on one leg forever.
In my life everything was always out of the ordinary. I was always
out of my comfort zone so the only person or situation that was constant was the presence of my mother, and she knew it. She knew she had to be there or I would collapse. When would we each get our own wings and learn to fly? Somehow I had always felt so very sorry for my mother. She never was able to be the mother she really wanted to be to me after I turned nine years old. She had to become my best friend, my father, my teacher, my therapist, my everything, and ultimately the person she wanted to embody most of all she could not. By the end of the day there was no more time to be the mother. She had to fill all my expectations and fill all the big gaps. The burden of this on her shoulders must have been immense. It was almost like she had to raise me as a single mother and help me become an adult very quickly. There was no time for child’s play. Elders who were my teachers and formed my life on and off ice endlessly engulfed me.
We moved to Los Angeles, then had a short stay in Hawaii, then ended up back in Dubai with my family, all in the next few years. It is all quite a blur accompanied by gallons and gallons of tears. No matter what we did nothing seemed to alleviate my physical pain. I was loved wherever I went for my skating but tensions were rising in other areas of my life. I was visiting doctors and hospitals nonstop trying to figure out my problems. We moved from one place to the next trying to cure me. We would try one doctor’s treatment for a few months and when nothing was helping we would try to find another specialist. One doctor took great advantage of my situation and his treatment bordered on sexual abuse, but I kept quiet about it. He said what he did was his technique to cure my back. I just wanted to heal, and to be at mercy of doctors is a dangerous situation to be in. I was going to so many specialists it was driving me insane. I had one for my stomach, one for my ears, one for my nose, one for my head, one for my eyes (as they were now in so much pain and very swollen), and I had doctors for various other problems.
