by Lucinda Ruh
But sometimes the practices went on for hours because in one way or another I couldn’t achieve what my mother wanted from me for her, or what I wanted to give her. I would get so angry with myself and hate myself for not being able to do it. I would have fits and start shaking and crying, have panic attacks, and then of course it all would get worse. I had to recuperate and then try again and again. I would not be able to leave the ice if I didn’t do what was wanted, not only because of the consequences from my mother, but also because throughout the day I would then have a huge guilt that I couldn’t give my mother the one thing she wanted. She gave me everything, so why couldn’t I do the same?
I started tearing out all my eyebrows and eyelashes again, due to anxiety, and started picking my skin until I bled. My fingers were covered in blood all the time. My mother used to tell me stop picking, but the reason I picked was never addressed, so no matter how much I wanted to stop I couldn’t. I didn’t know why I was feeling so anxious. I just felt I wanted to change everything about me because I couldn’t change the real unknown reason that we were all too afraid to face. I cut all my hair off when I was seventeen out of the anger deep inside me. I trembled all the time and even the slightest noise like a door closing, or a drawer shutting, or a person coming into a room would make me jump. The reason for all my behavior and symptoms was never, ever discussed. We just continued as we were. Work, work, work, was the motto. People lost limbs in the war and still continued to walk, so what I was going through was nothing.
My father didn’t know about any of this and neither did my sister. I wasn’t able to tell my father because I hardly saw him, and if I tried telling him over the phone my mother would get angrier with me. My mother never wanted my father to know of any problems because she never wanted to put any pressure on him and always wanted him to feel that all was well. She wanted to be the best possible for my father. My sister and I were not close enough for me to feel that I could turn to her. Most importantly, I didn’t feel anyone needed to know, because I was wrong, and I deserved this treatment, that this is what needed to be done. At that time it didn’t seem wrong to any of us. My mother never once hit me in front of other people so no one at the rink knew about it either. I didn’t see a reason to tell my coach, since coaches were doing the same thing by hitting their students.
I thought I was only getting what I deserved, since my mother was ultimately just trying every way to make my coach happy after he said she needed to prepare me better. She had thought innocently that hitting me would solve the problem. My mother had given the coach her word to do her part to make me the best for him, and her word was to be kept. This is what the relationship between my mother and me had become. How truly sad.
When I was about fifteen years old my father had to leave Japan to return to his post in Switzerland. Usually the company had us stay in one country not more than three years, but by this time we had already been here for more than ten. This was because my father was bringing so much profit to the company and because not every family with little children could adapt as well as we had to a continent like Asia. They had kept us there as long as possible. Without asking or telling me so as to not hurt me, my parents decided that my mother and I would not follow my father. The family would separate and my mother and I would stay in Tokyo to finish my school and continue skating with my Japanese coach.
I felt the decision was primarily made because of my skating and the winter Olympic Games to be in Nagano, Japan in 1998. They thought staying in Japan would only be to my advantage. At that time I did not know that my father was going back to Switzerland. They just mentioned to me that he would be traveling more and more to Europe and I would see less of him. They did not want me to panic or worry about anything other than my skating. Their world revolved around my skating and me.
My father traveling more to Europe did not seem to me a big deal because by then I was used to my father not being around. No one realized that the little I could have seen of my father had we all stayed together would have made a difference in what was yet to happen to me. Even for my mother, if she had known that my father was at least present and that she could talk to him, it would have helped her stay more grounded and supported. For him to be now completely gone and so far away tore the family further apart and crushed my mother and me. Furthermore, living in Japan, which is a male chauvinist nation, two foreign women on their own would not make it very far.
The Olympics was nearing and there were big problems for me to contend with. Switzerland was accepting me less and less since they didn’t like the fact that I lived far away, nor did they think Japan was appropriate for me. They didn’t like the fact that while I was getting much acclaim for my spins being the best in the world, my jumps were suffering, and skating was a jumping sport.
The Swiss had a unique way of dealing with all of this. They would deliberately put me in second place at nationals almost every year so that I wouldn’t be able to go to the European championships. Since the rules were that only one Swiss girl who placed first could be sent to these championships, they wanted to send another skater of their choice in the hope of having her as a European champion. On the international stage I was always the best Swiss skater at that time, so it was puzzling for people to never see me at the European skating championships. But it always bit the Swiss delegation in the back, since the girls chosen to be sent to the European championships instead of me did not even once qualify in the top twenty-four. So they then would always come back running to me to ask if I would like to go to the world’s championships. It was ridiculous, but I went to five World Senior Skating Championships and only one European championship. That’s not how it should be done, but the Swiss are a different breed, and to this day I shall never understand what their motives have been in their relationship with me.
Thinking back I really had no one to back me up in any situation. I would have loved to see their faces if my coach or someone had confronted them and said, “Sorry she is not available for the World Figure Skating Championships, either!” But my mother and I were too alone and too scared of every conflict, and we were brainwashed to just be quiet and accepting and hope that justice would be served later on by God, if we were so lucky.
My Japanese coach started to complain to my mother that he felt I had hit a wall and if I couldn’t figure out why and how to get over it he didn’t know what else he could do for me. He mentioned that I was so different from Japanese people that he couldn’t fully understand my body and its rhythm. My mother would tirelessly try to make me get over this wall with the only method she knew, which was beatings and screaming. But I didn’t know how to get over it either, since my coach was also not giving me constructive help. Nothing was helping and everyone was probably only making the situation worse. He also had given me for a short time some extra care by helping me with off–ice training. But one day his wife mentioned to us that he was starting to get too tired, that he would need to pace himself, and would not be able to help me anymore. She said he needed to survive to go to the 1998 Olympics and I couldn’t tire him out.
So it’s safe to say that thanks to me, it is now 2010 and he is still coaching and going to the Olympics. I am truly glad I gave myself up so that I did not tire him out so much! Even all the off-ice coaches that the skaters had suddenly started ignoring me and turning their backs on me. Everyone told me that they were all too tired to coach me. Everything started to crumble. They were all tired of having a foreigner in their space. It was a space reserved for only them and I was an intruder they wanted to get rid of as fast as they could. In the end I do not think it was my Japanese coach’s method of teaching but the whole culture around us that broke the team. When my Japanese coach gave in to his wife’s wishes, he had no power to stand up for anything he believed in. He was a crumbled man himself.
My coach’s daughter had been going to Canada a lot for training, and one summer she suggested we go with her to have some new costumes made for me. Although Canad
a was as foreign to me as Japan had been in the beginning, it felt great to get off the island and see how others were training and learn about their environment. On our return to Japan my situation with my coach got worse and he became even more distant and cold. At competitions he taught me with such anger for no reason that I was frozen in time and skated terribly. I was in constant fear. He lied to my mother about various things. He didn’t want to be seen with my mother and me, especially when I wasn’t skating too well and he felt ashamed to be with us. We felt incredibly hurt since my parents had done so much for this coach. We had taken him around the world. I was his first student with whom he could travel and attend competitions in wonderful places. We took him on mini-vacations after the competitions and spoiled him with gifts and my parents spent all their money on him. Every single time after a competition I wrote him a thank-you card with a poem I made for him. We had opened up the world for him and this is how he treated us. He must not be a coach to treat a student in this way. That is not the way of a teacher.
I had to attend a prestigious show for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland at the very beginning of the year of 1996. The same man who had designed my new skating costumes the year before was also there to skate and conveniently he also mentioned that he was a skating coach. He really fell in love with my skating and my personality as his prospective student. Enthralled with the potential he saw within me, he invited me to move to his rink in Toronto, saying he would take care of me and coach me to become a star. A month later I once again saw him at the World Championships in Canada where he was there again to show his own paintings at an art exhibition that was part of the competition. He was truly a man of many arts.
He first invited my mother and me to his estate in the mountains in Mexico and we excitedly accepted the invitation. Our stay in his lavish, charming, extravagant home was enticing and wonderful as we frolicked by his pool, ran through the parks nearby, and had alluring conversations till late in the night. He was educated and intelligent and we never had a dull moment with him. We would awaken every morning to be once again enthralled by his energy, aptitude, and humor. It drew us nearer and nearer to the decision to move to Canada to have him train me. I felt a very close connection to him and felt it was destiny to have him be my new coach.
On returning to Japan my parents and I decided it was time for a drastic change and Canada it would be. We sprang on the possibility of feeling worthy and having someone so willing to help and so confident that he would make me a star. We were not used to that after being at the mercy of others for so long, so it was unfortunately falsely refreshing. Much more leg work of trying out other training facilities and coaches should have been done but “would have” and “could have” are the worst words in the English vocabulary since they bring nothing to the table. Everyone recommended to us that we should leave Japan, and I was looking forward very much to a change and to the new Canadian coach who gave me hope. It was what my parents knew at that time and they were trying to do their best with all that they had. All they wanted was to make me happy. By sixteen I had also finished high school in an accelerated program and I graduated with flying colors.
Our expectations were high for Canada and all that was promised to us, but it ultimately presented us with a devastating challenge and lessons for a lifetime that were learned the hard way. It would not only be a culture shock to us but also the beginning of a downward spiral that went on for a very long time. We would be swimming upstream for years to come.
From the February, 2001 issue of Paper magazine (Photograph by Nigel Barker)
My mother and father, always the fashionistas, in Capri, Italy, 1966 (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
My mother and me in Paris, (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
My skating life begins in Paris, France, closing a show in 1982 (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
Having so much fun at four years old (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
Four years old and already loving to spin (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
Enjoying a vacation with my family as we traveled all over the world (Photo Courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
Picture of me doing the Biellmann spin at only nine years old! (Photo courtesy of Lucinda Ruh)
Gliding with the angels on the Philippe Candeloro French Tour in 2003 (Photo courtesy of Gerrard Vandystadt)
6
Culture Shock
(TORONTO)
None are so blind like those who refuse to see.
I started to have a recurring dream where my eyes were always tightly shut. I would desperately try and try again to open them but would not be able to. The problem in the dream was that since I could not open my eyes, I could not see anything. I would wake up scared but relieved that at least I could see. For years I had this dream, but once I came to understand it, never again. At that time, my eyes were shut in the dream, as they were closed shut in my waking life. I had been refusing to see for a very long time.
Starting all over again and again can be exciting, daunting, and thrilling. It can be all these emotions rolled into one like a sushi roll that tastes oh, so good, that all you want is more and more. The different flavors melt in your mouth and give you an orgasmic feeling. But when you start taking the pieces apart and eat them separately your reaction is not the same and after one or two bites you have had enough. That is what can be so self-destructive about the need to start over. If you could take each emotion and dissect it separately and really feel each one on its own it wouldn’t be that marvelous, but all together, wow, it is!
Starting over can be a cover up for what is really going on in your life. It can be done as a need to get out of circumstances because of regret and anger, or sometimes from wanting to cut the strings by leaving, disappearing, and throwing everything up in the air. Starting fresh is much easier than dealing with troubling issues. And who says we can’t give ourselves a break by taking a road that might be easier for us in hopes that it will give us more happiness? Starting over can have incredible benefits and incredible downfalls. For my family, starting over frequently was necessary because of my father’s work, but later it became my need.
The jolt and excitement it gave me when I could just drop everything, not see the faces of those who hurt me so much, and start over again became ingrained in me. It came from feeling so much pain and hurt with other people that I couldn’t bear the fact of being around them. Picking up and leaving was my way of dealing with it. Wanting to start over was much more exciting than dealing with the present situation. It happened again and again over the next ten years, until I had to face my fear, hopes, dreams, my true spirit, and heal my demons.
In June of 1997 I remember so intensely boarding the bus that took us to the airport in Tokyo with my mother by my side and tears rolling down our faces. I was so scared of what was to come. We were leaping full force into the invisible, as if we were jumping over craters of the earth hoping someone was on the other side to catch us. We looked at my father, who had come to help us with the move, waving at us as we waved back. He looked so sad and helpless, yet so kind and as if he just wanted to give my mother and me the world. I wanted us to jump off the bus right then and there to stay with my father. But skating pulled me back again since I felt skating had to come first, although I wished family could have. I wished either my father could have gone with us to Canada too or we could have gone home to Switzerland with him. I had hoped deep inside of me that he would say, “Don’t go to Canada. Come back to Switzerland with me. We will find a coach there and it will be all right.”
I wanted so much for my parents to take initiative and pull me back since I was too afraid to do this myself. I didn’t want to say that this was what I wanted because I thought I would be blamed for not wanting to put my skating first. And I really did want to do everything for skating, but I felt I was losing myself in the midst of the chaos. At that time I just wanted family time. But my parents thought they were making me happy by moving anywhere in the w
orld for the right coach. We knew we had to leave Japan since it was holding back both my personal development and my skating but why could we not go to Switzerland? Japan had changed my personality into a shy, reserved, and scared girl and it held back my artistry since any artistry of a different kind was shunned.
Little did we know at that time that just being a family again and going back “home” might have cured all these problems. But we pushed on. We saw that going back to Switzerland would mean giving up, and giving up was not the Swiss or Japanese thing to do. We hoped that I would be more accepted in Canada and treated more as one of them. We hoped I would get the attention I needed to skate my best. We hoped I would get my confidence back.
The bus and plane trips to the other side of the world were torture and it felt like my heart was being ripped apart. In one way, I just wanted everything to stop. However, I wanted to be strong for my mother and make her feel that I was so happy and grateful that this was all being done for me. But this was very superficial. I could in no way tell my mother my true emotions. That would be too selfish of me. It would tear my mother apart and I could never allow myself to hurt her.
I was confused but I was also excited for a whole new life. I was sixteen but I was more like a twelve year old since I had been so sheltered from the outside world. I stuffed away my emotions as I had done since arriving in Japan and that’s where they would remain for more years to come. There was so much stacked away in there that every time I put more emotions away I felt it in my stomach and heart. I would feel like I was suffocating, sick to my stomach and trembling. My emotions began to show up physically. But there was no way I could not follow through with the plan. My responsibility was too big now. There was no turning back for me in my situation. How could I disappoint my mother? That would be the death of me.