Frozen Teardrop (23 page)

Doug Aitken photographed my spinning for his “Sleepwalkers” exhibition at MOMA.
(Doug Aitken, Sleepwalkers, 2007, courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, 303 Gallery Eva Presenhuber, Regen Projects, Victoria Miro Gallery)

Antonio and I walk across Fifth Avenue on our wedding day after the ceremony held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, October 16, 2010.
(Photo by Michael Vernadsky, courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)

(ZURICH, TOKYO, HACKENSACK, SUN VALLEY)

The blind were leading the blind.

I
must admit looking back that I think I was completely, truly, and utterly insane in many unclassified ways. No question about it. I did the same thing over and over and over again and I expected different results each time. It was not just me; it was all those around me who orchestrated and conducted my life. We continued in our ways, yet we were always hoping for a completely opposite outcome. You just try even harder than before, while never getting what you hope for, and all you do is ask “Why when working so hard, is so little achieved?” We never think to re-evaluate “how” we are doing it.

There could be many various reasons for the mistakes of a failed execution, but if no one is able to pinpoint the core reason of why it failed, you will never ever be able to fully correct it and succeed. If we can't see for ourselves the reason for our mistakes we need others to discover it for us. Yet when the others around you are living in your bubble as well, it also becomes impossible for them to see it. Sometimes in life stepping back is much more important than trying to move forward. This is when you learn the most about yourself. I was trying so hard with all my might to move forward yet just like I did with my famous spins, all I was doing was spinning in one place. I would never move from one place where I was digging a hole in the ice.

That is what my life had become. I was drilling my own hole deeper and deeper into the earth, deeper into despair as I spun around and around, always returning to where I started. How ironic that my strongest trait on ice would be the way I live my life unconsciously off the ice as well. It was a mirror image not to vanish until I fell so hard right through the glass and shattered it to pieces.

I longed for happier times. I wanted so much to go back to the time when I was little and engulfed in the fairy-tale life my mother and father had created for me. They were and are perfect parents in an imperfect world. The life they gave me had been so beautiful, so magical, so like a fantasy, and so angelic. Their hearts and souls are made of gold and they had been forced into a world built on mistrust, wrong judgment, and petty criticism. It was not my parents' choice, yet skating had warped them into people they were not, and forced them to make decisions that no parent should have to make.

I understand the famous singer's wish to be like Peter Pan and never grow up. Long before this, I had thought that, too. I wanted never to grow up. My life as a kid was so glorious, so enchanting. It was what I, and children around the world, envision life to be and it wasn't growing up that changed it, it wasn't even skating. It was everything that surrounded skating in our world. Movement on the ice is pure. The frozen water that the clean sharp blade paints on is pure. The intention is pure. The face is pure. Yet every single thing that surrounds the outside of the circumference of the ice is not. Our bodies are made mostly of water and water holds every emotion within its structure. I wonder what kind of emotion each patch of ice held packed so tightly?

It was just the start of the skating season yet my competition season was over. The injury that was so serious from pain and debilitation, yet had no diagnosis, would hamper me for a long time. I wasn't talking much at all, not knowing what to say, and I started questioning my life. What was I to do if I could never skate again? My sadness and frustration was plainly visible and my parents thought that sending me to Tokyo for ten days would cheer me up. They knew I really missed my life there and they wanted me to just have some playtime. In Switzerland the physical therapists were not doing any good since their orders were to heal a torn muscle. They could not even really touch me when I was in so much pain, so they and we were at a loss.

The last few years I lived in Tokyo I was treated by a famous Japanese doctor who worked with the best baseball and track and field teams as well as other athletes in Japan. I remember his office well. He was a very prestigious doctor with about twenty employees following his orders. He did massage, acupuncture, and all sorts of therapies. He had about five people on beds on which he would work at the same time, going from one to another all day long. He was a tiny guy with the most energy I have ever seen. He worked for about two hours on each patient. The minute your therapy was done another patient was waiting in the wings to take your place. You would think his office would be a palace but it was in the busiest part of Tokyo in the Shibuya area and crammed in between two high-rise buildings. It was a shack three stories high that looked like it could fall any minute. I remember vividly that whenever a big truck passed by the whole building and the beds would shake feverishly. Every single time before I entered the building I said a prayer and made the sign of the cross praying that there would be no earthquake while I was in there.

I was in constant pain and could not truly bend in any direction or do any sort of exercise, but I could walk and I was excited to go back to my home. I was excited also to travel for once in my life without my skates. It felt awkward to not pack them but was secretly a little freeing as well. I needed a much-deserved break. Tokyo was wonderful, rekindling memories. Eating the food I had grown up with and revisiting my old school and teachers there was fantastic.

Right away I took time to go to the Japanese doctor. He was thrilled to see me and mentioned how much I had grown. I had left Tokyo very tiny and I kept on growing since I left. I was twenty years old by now and my growth plates in my spine had still not closed. There were many reasons I always got injured so quickly: my height, my restricted diet, my imbalanced hormones, my not allowing my body to rest or heal, and my following bad coaching techniques. My restricted diet made my bones more brittle and did not let my body go through puberty, causing a domino effect in other areas of my body. Not resting and not allowing myself to heal and grow also stopped a lot of processes a woman needs to go through, and so my body was frozen in time. I suspect all this caused a lot of my problems that later escalated and caused major havoc in my life.

I explained to the doctor what had happened with my back. I told him how much pain I was in and that the diagnosis did not seem to fit what I was feeling. He told me to lie down on the bed. He took one look at my back and stepped back. I knew he had seen everything, and in a land where no injury is really serious enough to stop you from training, I did not expect him to think much of my spine.

He asked me if I knew that there was a huge bone protruding from my spine, and I told him I knew this. He looked completely stunned. He told me he couldn't understand how I could even walk. He said I needed to get more X-rays, a second opinion right away about the nature of my injury He said he would not be able to do anything for me since he did not want to touch or treat someone with something like that. He said my whole back from the coccyx to the neck was now so tight and so cramped he would not be able to touch me. I left there feeling at least that someone saw something that matched what I was feeling and it confirmed that I was not crazy and delusional.

I relayed the news to my parents and you could tell they were covering up their emotions as they told me, not to worry, just to have fun in Tokyo and that they would take care of it when I got back. I enjoyed the rest of the trip but I had this intense fear within me that if I moved the wrong way, in any minute I could become paralyzed. I did not want to voice this because I would sound like I was complaining, and since the medical doctor in Switzerland had said nothing was wrong, people would think I was talking nonsense. I kept the fear to myself but it was stronger than ever. I usually just dismissed an injury but this one struck a chord in many ways.

Once back home in Zurich, I knew it was time to discuss what our next step would be. A second doctor's opinion never came up again. My parents were adamant that the injury was nothing serious and in a short while I would be fine again, and up and running, or more like up and skating, in no time. We always thought injuries would just heal on their own, as long as we did not think about them, touch them, or even mention them. My parents did not seem worried at all but maybe they were very good at hiding it. I hid it well too. They thought the less they talked about it the more I would forget about it, and the more quickly the injury would go away.

My mother and father share the philosophy that a lot is produced in the mind and if the mind doesn't accept the injury then there is none. Voilà! Just like that they desperately wanted the injury to disappear. All the discussions were about how to get back to skating. Many discussions became heated and my mother would frequently lash out again. You have to understand that skating had become my mother's life, maybe even more so than mine. As much as I missed it she missed it a hundred times more. As much as I was in pain from the injury, she was in more pain from not seeing me skate. I was the one who couldn't skate but she was still capable of going to the rink. For her not to have the schedule of bringing me to the rink and back, preparing me for skating, and the excitement of the whole journey, brought great frustration to her. While I enjoyed the freedom she missed not having a purpose. I had been her purpose and for me to take this away from her made me feel incredibly guilty and her feel helpless.

Every day was tortuously long and filled with despair. I felt incapable of making the situation better. The only way I knew of helping everyone except me to get over this was to get back on the ice. My spins would heal them. From the time of the injury to the first time I went back on the ice was six months, but it felt much longer. That was the longest that I had not been on the ice. I went back on the ice for my mother and my father as I saw the longing in their tearful eyes. My mother said she and my father and the whole world were missing my spins.

Guilt set in and I started back slowly. I made a promise to myself that I would do this for my parents and if something else happened to my spine and I was paralyzed it would prove that I had done everything I possibly could have to thank them for the devotion and utmost love to me. I was willing to take that risk for them as they had taken risks for me. It was a dangerous promise but I felt to skate was the least I could do for them. I owed it to them to bring them the fruit of their labor. I have to admit I was very scared about my body and I prayed that my angels would stay with me.

It seems amazing that I started training again, carefully and cautiously. I did not know what I was training for but just left the goal in the hands of God. How quickly my life had changed. Just one year ago I had basked in the spotlight excited about more great skating to come and now I was back to square one. A year ago finally Switzerland had wanted to give me many opportunities including ones in television, commercials, magazines and endless endorsements and now I to become just an invalid was hard to digest. When your whole career is based on your body and you lose that one thing, you feel you have lost your whole life.

One day in the spring of 2000 we received a phone call from a skating agent who was in America. He wanted to represent me and he wanted me to turn professional. He told my mother my opportunities would be endless and that jumps would not be required of me. He could get me any show I wanted and my spinning would be my forte. He emphasized his point by bringing up the fact that no one was doing them like me and I had the big chance to be the “special one” and become famous. He reeled us in with grandiose words of persuasion. He said he could arrange right away to have me skate in Sun Valley, Idaho for the entire summer doing a show once a week. I could then decide how I would want to proceed. The shows in Sun Valley during the summer were very famous in the skating world and although we had heard of them, we had no real idea of the situation there.

My mother, always loving any new adventure to do with skating, thought it was wonderful. We talked it over a little and since we were “yes” people we sprang at any opening. We never thought things through or weighed options. My parents and I were so accustomed to having a knee jerk reaction while having to make decisions very quickly. We were always on the go from one continent to another, and we never had had the chance to sit down and think things out or wait for other chances. Whatever first came up, due to pressure or the circumstance we were in, we always felt we had to take. The mentality with the Ruhs was “It's better to have a sparrow in your hand than a pigeon on the roof that you could not catch at any moment. But what if you waited and baited that pigeon in? But waiting was not a word we used. We took the proposal. We did not want to commit to anything more quite yet but wanted to give it a chance to open my horizons.

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.