Frozen Teardrop (12 page)

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)

(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 world 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.

Upon arriving in Toronto, to our surprise my new coach greeted us at the airport and gave us a great welcome. We felt appreciated but this would be quite short-lived. Again, our place to stay was a hotel until we found our new home. Our first stop was to go to see the ice rink and unfortunately, to add to my mother's angst, my new coach mentioned that there would be no ice for another two weeks! That infuriated my mother since she was used to my never, ever taking more than one day off. In Japan I used to go from airport to school to the ice rink and back and forth without wasting any time.

Ice rinks and ice time were always our first destination when we arrived somewhere. I remember my mother always saying, “Look, here is the ice rink. Don't you want to go see the ice rink?” I really did not care to when I already was breathing, eating, living, and dreaming skating, but my parents would be so excited. I'll see it later, I thought. For me the big white buildings with ice inside symbolized much more to me than just an ice rink. The moment I entered it seemed like I had a great big mountain on my shoulder. There was so much emotion attached to it and more would be added in the next few years — fear, anger, hurt, excitement, happiness, love for spinning, and being artistic all rolled into one. Another great sushi roll I was addicted to.

Skating was becoming a chore for me. It was work, a job, and I desperately needed a break from it but neither my parents nor I really understood my feelings. We were blind. But it wasn't all filled with despair. When on the ice and spinning and doing my programs, expressing myself and being excited about the training that led up to a competition, were wonderful. The adrenaline rushed through my body and gave me great energy and determination. The constant training or rather addiction to it was enticing. It was exciting! Having constant goals and being able to train for them was amazing.

The spinning is what really did it for me. I felt I could morph myself into all sorts of positions and creations. It was my playtime and I would do it for hours and hours while it silently and unknowingly was killing my body. I really loved training as well, more than the competitions. I was addicted to over training. It felt great to push and push myself beyond my limits. It felt great to be in pain and have my bruises to show that I worked.

I had finished high school and attending university never crossed my mind. Skating was the only thing in my head. I lived for skating. I loved to study and when I was younger I wanted to be a scientist or an architect but skating had entirely engulfed every other aspect of my life and my parents never discussed my attending a university with me. It was as if there was no other choice but to skate since I was so successful at it, and my parents and even I thought we knew that's all I wanted. Here, strangely and awkwardly for the first time in my life, I had a little more time to relax in between the training times. I went with my mother to the supermarket, or to window shop with a stroll in the city, which was almost a first for me. I really had trouble picking out what I wanted to buy since I never had to do that. Everything had been presented to me on a silver platter. My mother always wanted me not to have to do any chores other than school and skating. Here my mother didn't like the fact that I had free time. It made her feel she wasn't doing enough for me and wasn't used to having me with her doing all those chores.

For me, too, it was a huge change. I wasn't feeling useful, and felt like I wasn't being productive enough all day even though I had a heavy schedule of skating and off-ice training. The level I was at was more intense than ever. When not training there really was only time to eat and sleep and then rest a little, which again I was not used to doing at all. I missed studying and I missed being super, super busy. Resting for me was so awkward. It was uncomfortable. It brought up more feelings that I was so trying to repress. What was I supposed to do? Just lay there? I was so accustomed to rushing everywhere and not having enough time that when I did have time for myself I had no idea what to do with it and my emotions were just getting in the way.

So I figured I would just train more. I would do sit-ups while watching television, vowing to myself I would never really just rest. I would feel too guilty to just lie there and read a book. I would do exercises all day. Now that was really not a good idea and I ended up inflicting bad things upon myself. I would in fact train so much that I became so injured that I would require even more time to rest, making me even more anxious and sad. It was a never-ending vicious cycle. But in the end, you really do get what you want. The injuries were voicing for my body what I wasn't speaking in words. It and I wanted rest.

Everything was so different in Toronto when compared to Japan, that it took my mother and me a while to adjust. Some ordinary foods tasted different, especially essentials like milk and water, and my taste buds rejected them in the beginning. The streets, people, culture, and way of doing things were very different from what we were used to and we had a hard time getting accustomed. It was amusing because in Japan taxi doors opened and closed automatically, and so when we wanted a taxi in Toronto we would stupidly wait for the door to open. Or else we forgot to close the door when leaving until we were shouted at for our mistake and would suddenly remember we had to manually close it.

People were not as gracious and courteous as in Japan. Compared to Japan, of course, it was dirtier and the Canadian fashions seemed odd to us. We really felt like aliens this time, whereas in Japan we were considered aliens but felt more like one of them. Here we fit in more on the outside but on the inside we couldn't have felt more disparate. The training, especially, with the new coach seemed completely absurd to me. Here there were very few skaters on the ice at one time. In Tokyo when I had skated during public sessions in the afternoons there would be sometimes fifty people on the ice. In the freestyle sessions there were usually about thirty people and no one would ever get in anyone's way. We all knew where everyone went as well as their patterns so everything worked like clockwork as all else did in Japan. In Japan we had mothers of the skaters play our music and there was a list of those who wanted to do their programs. In military fashion music was played according to the list. The order was never changed and you would have to wait your turn. The list the next day would start off where it ended the day before. You had only one chance and if there wasn't enough time you had to wait until the next day to do your program.

Now in Canada there were perhaps only ten people on the ice and everyone seemed to be in everyone's way. You had to play your own music and you could repeat and repeat sections of the programs. Everyone seemed to be pushing for their rights and want their way. Here skaters had water and tissue paper on skating boards that they frequently went to. In Japan we also had tissue paper because the ice rinks are cold and our noses ran a lot, but in Japan it was forbidden to take a tissue during a lesson. We would be allowed only one tissue a session. If the coach or your mother saw you taking more than one you would be yelled at. Even when we did take a tissue we couldn't just stand there and blow our noses. You would take it while you were skating by the boards and blow your nose while continuing to skate and then throw it conveniently in the garbage can placed off the ice. In Canada, the skater stayed in one place and blew and blew and blew till you thought their whole nose would come off!

Oh, and the skaters actually smiled and talked to each other and they even talked to their coaches! Wow, it seemed like everyone was just playing and it was some sort of a game. My mother and I definitely didn't like it and we thought we were being taken advantage of. How could skaters be having fun on the ice? It wasn't playtime. It was working on the ice. No resting, no talking, no smiling. That was skating. What was happening? We missed the dedication, the beautiful respect skaters had for coaches, the determination and the order in which all was done in Tokyo.

We moved into an apartment a few months into our stay in Toronto. I hated staying at hotels since they did not feel like my home and this just added to the fact that I was not HOME. But I see now that my aggravation about not getting a home more quickly was only the natural emotion of a girl feeling lost. But this was definitely the wrong reaction to our situation because we had to move again only a few months after moving to our new apartment. This would happen quite often to us. As it had happened in Japan when we had moved closer to the rink and it closed down, again in Canada as soon as we tried to cling to what we wanted we would lose it.