Frozen Teardrop

by Lucinda Ruh

  But if time did not exist how were we wasting it? Being in Dubai for a little holiday I felt very lazy and felt unproductive. Producing is the key word here as producing was always what I measured myself by. Little did I know that by not doing anything, I could have given my body the chance to do something. I was twenty-two and had still not gone through puberty and I was still growing. If I had let my body rest and rejuvenate what was to come would never have happened. But then I refused to see this and I carried on like a Good Samaritan.

  I missed Japan a lot and we felt to leave for Tokyo on my own for a little more than a month to enjoy being “home” would do me good. I would stay at my coach’s home where he lived with his wife and son and I could train with him until I felt confident again and well. I was excited but very tired and overexerted. It felt like I had been running for twenty years nonstop. I had been feeling like my body could no longer move. This was not in my imagination either. It was real. My body felt extraordinarily heavy and it seemed nearly paralyzed. I would have to lie down and just rest. But again we all refused to see what was happening and went to the outside world to help me feel better. My mother always told me to just put a smile on my face and be happy. That made everyone else think I was happy, but it would not heal anything I was going through since the happiness did not stem from within me. I had to change and I did not know how.

  At the last minute I started to panic about leaving again. I did not want to go anywhere but I felt it was my duty to heal myself and do everything possible to skate again. The one thing I was striving for was the one thing that was killing me. When the flight was boarding I made a last call to my mother and father to say goodbye from the pay phone. Situations felt like they were on automatic mode and were being played over and over again for me. I felt like the days at skating camp and like the days in Sun Valley where I would cry on the phone to my mother and father not wanting to ever hang up. I was calling once again in desperation for them to stop me and pull me back. I was alone and frightened. When you don’t feel well and don’t know why, it is the scariest thing in the world. I feel it is scarier then when you know why you are in pain or sick because then you can actually do something about it. With no doctor’s diagnosis, there is no solution. When there is no possible solution it feels like you could die in any minute.

  Everyone had boarded except me. They were motioning me to hurry up. I had to hang up. I forced myself to go on the trail leading to the plane. I was crying hysterically. I did not want to go but felt I had to go. I did not have the courage to turn back now. I would be a failure to myself and to my family. If I were to turn back I would just be in Dubai feeling guilty about resting so it was a catch twenty-two.

  The feeling was terrible. I could hardly walk. My body froze and I had to hold my legs and pull them one in front of the other to make myself move. I felt frozen in time as if a huge concrete wall was in front of me that I could not pass through and I could not see the other side. I do not know how I got on that plane. Even now, rewriting this time brings me to tears. I was in such denial of the whole situation. I was trying to please my parents so much and they were trying to please me so much that in the end nobody was pleasing anybody. I plopped in my seat and sobbed. I looked out of the window as tears rolled down my cheeks. I must have cried the whole first three hours of the trip before I fell asleep. I did not know if I was to survive. I was so terrified and lonely. I had never felt like this.

  The whole journey was a blur. God must have been holding me in his hands. I took a taxi to my coach’s home. It was small and in Japanese style, not like the massive homes we had as expats, but I liked it since it was authentically Japanese and I felt at home. His home was near an ice rink, one that I had skated on many times for competitions and tests while I lived in Tokyo. It held many memories. There was a bridge over a highway connecting where he lived to where the ice rink was. It was all within walking distance.

  I put the experience of the plane trip in the back of my mind. I tucked it away safely with all my other experiences where light was not to be shed upon. I settled in and decided to get on the ice with my coach to see if my moods would get better. I really did not want to skate anymore when the pain overrode the joy but I was willing to try. After all that is why I had come all the way back to Tokyo. I managed to get on the ice every day for the first week and seeing familiar faces brought back the old times. I explored Tokyo on my own, visiting my old school and my teachers. I spent a lot of time with my old math teacher and his wife whom I had loved so much. It always felt wonderful to be around him since he was like my uncle.

  After the first week of skating I started to despise it even more. He wanted to train me for the Olympics and I tried to explain to him that the Olympic dream was now dead. It was all too painful and I saw absolutely no reason to skate anymore. To top it off, since I was not feeling well I felt too weak to train.

  One night I awoke around 11:00 p.m. not feeling well. My body felt very heavy and I felt dizzy and faint. As I went to get out of the bed to go to the restroom my legs gave way and I fell to the floor. When I got up to open my door, my coach and his son who were talking in the living room asked me if I was all right, saying they had heard a big thud. I said I had fallen, they laughed, and I went into the bathroom. I came out feeling worse and collapsed in the arms of my coach. The next thing I knew I was back in my bed and they had called the ambulance. The paramedics couldn’t find my blood pressure, the same as the time I fainted in California and my body was shaking. I was freezing. They rushed me to the hospital where once again I was treated for exhaustion and malnutrition. My coach and I left the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. The fainting for the second time had me really scared. I was scared to fall asleep or to wander too far from his home in case it happened again. I was frightened of my own body. It was thought that I was fainting due to exhaustion and although that was a huge factor there were many more serious factors to be unveiled in the next few years.

  This trip’s purpose had been to cure all my ailments, but it ended up exacerbating them. After my first week in Tokyo, gradually my emotions took an even deeper downward spiral. The first week I had gotten myself to the rink and had been able to skate a bit at a time. The second week I got myself to the rink but I was not able to lace my skates and get on the ice. After a few days of not skating I found myself unable to even get my body to the ice rink. I just could not walk over the bridge. The feeling that I had boarding the plane in Dubai was with me again. Oddly enough I could walk everywhere else, to town, to go shopping, or wherever else I wanted to go. But to go to the ice rink or do anything having to do with ice skating, I could not do.

  Even when trying with all my physical and mental strength to get myself over the bridge to that big white building that enclosed the frozen water like a prison, I could not move. I would look at the building, collapse to the ground, and sob for hours. Looking back I can’t believe how every single day I did this. Sometimes twice a day! I would try and try again to get to the rink with my skates in my hands. Again I would not reach the building. I know now that even just the simple feeling of actually wanting to go somewhere has a lot to do with your actually physically getting there.

  One day as I was trying to get myself to the ice rink, I hit an ultimate low. I paused at the bridge to look below at the cars whizzing by. I felt so sad and was in so much pain that I felt like jumping off into the freeway below. I wanted my suffering to end so badly as I looked down intently with fear. As I stood looking at the cars below, I suddenly felt a strong hand pull me back and a loud voice telling me, “NO, you cannot do this. There is a bigger reason and purpose for your existence on this earth than skating and you must live to tell it. I promise you this.” Whether it was my own inner voice, the voice of God or a higher power, or my parents’ voices, I will never know.

  But it made me step back and fall down onto the bench and I sobbed. I never cried that much. I don’t know if anyone saw me but in a moment like this you don�
��t see or feel anything around you. Nothing else exists. Instead of taking the plunge, I had stepped back from the edge. My will to live was still much stronger than the will to die. I knew that killing myself would not solve anything. I wanted the situation around me to die and so I had contemplated ending it in this way. But in the end I could not fathom to be so selfish as to take my own life. To take the biggest gift you receive away from yourself would be pure cowardliness. Also, with the fear of the pain it would cause my parents in ways impossible to describe, I could never, ever do this. That would be too much of a sin. After what seemed to be hours, and the day had turned into night, I got up and solemnly walked back home. I would never skate at that rink again.

  At that time I did not tell my parents any details but just mentioned that I was not getting any better. Being so far away from them and not having them right next to me, made it impossible to say some things. I was embarrassed as well, and situations like these are not made for a conversation over a wire that is stretched for miles and miles. I also did not want them to worry. I thought I should be able to take care of myself. A mother is always a mother however, and she could feel from the beginning of my arrival in Japan that something was severely wrong. My mother confesses to me now she was terrified for my life during this time and had sleepless nights. As for my coach, I just told him that I was just too tired to skate with him. I was a great actress after all and hid everything pretty well.

  A few days passed and as not skating was making me feel like there was a huge hole in my life, I did tell my mother, father and coach that the only way I would be able to skate again is if I were to be invited to the most prestigious tour in the world, Smucker’s Stars on Ice in America. Then and only then would I get back on the ice. I felt I had done everything else, and never liking repetition, I needed something new. The shows were starting to be all the same to me. I was already the best spinner in the world, leaving my mark in history and I could not do more than I had pushed my body to do. Stars on Ice was the only thing left I wanted to be part of. They understood but unfortunately it was not in their hands to make this happen.

  To add to all this upheaval, my coach and his family were not happy in Japan. They felt like outcasts (welcome to my world) and they wanted a chance in America. I absolutely love doing things for other people. I always have and always will. I love to strive to make other people happy even if I end up sacrificing a part of myself. I told my coach that I would take care of his whole family’s visas and that I would make it possible for him to work in the States. After all, I was not skating and maybe this is why I had come to Japan. This, however, was a huge task to take on for a twenty-two year old. A whole Chinese family’s destiny was in my hands.

  No matter what had happened in the past, I felt this was my way of giving my grateful thank-you back to my coach for giving me the wonderful skating time I had in China. It was my way of repaying him, and I knew that no amount of money could ever be equal to it. He made it possible for me to land all the triples and had made me feel like I had accomplished all there was to accomplish on the ice. After suffering with my jumps for so many years that feeling of finally succeeding is indescribable. I was confident I could do this for them, and mostly for him. Loving to make things happen, I was willing to make all the phone calls and do all the paperwork necessary.

  I called the necessary people that needed to be a part of this to make it a success and got to work. Because it was almost a twenty-four-hour a day job it took my mind off all my pain and hospital visits. It was a lot of pressure since it would be a one-time chance to accomplish this. You can’t keep revisiting the embassy for a visa. If they deny you for any reason, then you have to wait before you can try again. I had only a few weeks to do all of this. I was determined.

  My parents were very astonished that I was undertaking this task and were afraid I was taking a risk as well. If it succeeded we would feel and be responsible for many things to come for the whole family. I am not sure they wanted me to do it, but I was very stubborn, thinking I would help the whole family just like he had when he helped me with my jumps. None of them had ever lived in the United States, nor had his wife or son ever even stepped foot on U.S. soil. They did not speak very much English, either. It might have looked like a disaster waiting to happen but to see my coach so miserable in Japan, I could not just do nothing.

  Through endless phone calls with lawyers and ice rink managers, translating nonstop, embassy visits, and emails, I worked and worked, sometimes staying up all night because of the time difference. It was a big job, lots of sweat and tears, but it was all worthwhile when I truly succeeded. By the time I had to leave Tokyo a month later, I had given the whole family a chance at a new life. My coach and his family would have a new home and it would be in the best city in the world, New York City! I managed to give my coach a teaching job at a famous ice rink facility in the city, and for him and his wife a visa to live in the U.S.! All in one month! The son would have to wait a few more months until his parents settled in the U.S. and then they would be able to bring him over but even he would also have a job waiting for him, all arranged.

  I handed it to them on a silver plate. When I got word that their visas were accepted and informed my coach we had a celebratory dinner. They had tears in their eyes as we stood in line to go to the U.S. Embassy to get their visas and they could not have looked prouder. The American dream was now alive to them and I had been a part of it. There was joy and excitement in the household. My parents, and even I, were incredibly proud of me.

  When I set my mind to something, I push everything and everyone including me aside, and so I decided for their sake that I would not return to Dubai, but would go directly back to Hackensack, New Jersey where I still had my apartment. My mother would meet me there as well to help me. I would have to arrange everything for the family’s arrival in the U.S. I would need to find an apartment and furnish it for them and make sure they would be comfortable right upon arrival. It was all on my shoulders and my responsibility as I had been the one who had made it possible. I did not want to ruin it with any ridiculous mistakes. They were scheduled to arrive in New York City in the beginning of August of 2001. What was awaiting us would shock not only us but also the whole world. We could never have fathomed or imagined this one.

  Confusion. What is it? How do you define it? I must say confusion was the motivation for a search for knowledge in my life. Everything around me seemed so complex and confusing in my mind from a young age. I used to repeat to my mother over and over again from when I was four years old, “I am all mix, I am all mix.” Life and circumstances confused me. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed as it should. People were voicing things that they did not believe. People’s actions did not follow what they believed. Everything looked like a lie. I had always wished everyone was just truthful and lived a life of honor. What you don’t or can’t understand is always more intriguing then what you can and that is always what fascinated me. To be confused is to pay attention, and I would pay close attention. The whole world has so much information yet very few people have real knowledge. Real knowledge is what I would search for.

  14

  Terror

  (HACKENSACK, NEW YORK CITY)

  To mourn or to celebrate?

  I feel that death is such a complex matter, not so much for the person who has passed on but for the people left behind because they have to keep living with the fact that their loved one has passed. But maybe, just maybe, that soul who has crossed over is smiling up above or maybe already back on this earth in a new body and living right beside you once more. Each and every soul has a purpose and a journey and when that journey is complete in the vehicle that it resides in, it must continue to evolve and leave for a short while, change costumes, and come back down. I believe anything is possible. So, are they to be mourned or is their life to be celebrated? What are we actually mourning? It is our loss more than anything else.

  Perhaps we should not mourn for them. They
have chosen their path in one way or another. That is what I believe. You will never know the last conversations the soul has in those last few minutes on earth. You will only know the conversation your soul will have. When the time comes I truly hope and believe that in the heart and minds of those who pass on their last moments are filled with peace. No matter how we go I pray and keep my faith that every single person can be blessed in their few last minutes on this earth.

  I believe that the soul lives on and never dies. It cannot die because it does not have an end or a beginning. It has and always will be alive. A soul is not tangible. Therefore it can never be destroyed. I believe that when people are born, they cry and the world rejoices, and I hope that every single human can live such a life that when they cross over, the world will cry from missing that soul’s magical presence, but they will also rejoice. We must not hang on to the fact of death but rather to the fact of how he lived his life. In the end that is all the soul will take with him.

  I arrived back in Hackensack, and my mother met me there. The month of July would be action packed. A lot would have to be done before the arrival of my Chinese coach and his wife. This was an exciting time of new adventures. I only wanted to continue skating if I could be in Stars on Ice and my wish was granted. I was thrilled and elated and couldn’t believe my ears. It was a great birthday gift. Now I could get back on ice and have a purpose once more. My Chinese coach had always said in essence that I should never give up loving what I could not do anymore, and always find a way of loving what I could do. Waking up in the morning, eating breakfast, breathing, anything, really. Always to love what you do and find the love in whatever you do. I was not a warrior yet in my mind but having this opportunity brought back my love for skating.