Abused, Traumatized, Broken, Alive

A biography of Ruby Noir — the girl behind the pain.

Brutal honesty.

I never thought I’d be accepted to Illumination, let alone Illumination-Curated. To now see a piece that I wrote featured in a curation volume among such powerful voices… to say it’s humbling would be an understatement.

Yet here it sits.

Within the piece, it suggests writing a self-introduction to submit to Illumination. A biography.

My story isn’t pretty though when I mention within it that I was a professional ballerina, people expect it to be pretty.

My introduction comes late, having been a Medium member for two years, though you probably don’t know me. I tell my life story in pieces and intertwine the broken bits of my battered existence with prompt writing, sarcasm, and a lot of pieces about animals.

My biography is incomplete as there are parts to the story I do not share, and it is not an autobiography as the only way for me to be honest is to hide behind a pseudonym.

My name is not Ruby Noir.

My real name is inconsequential as it was chosen off a clothing label by a woman who gave me life and hated me for it before I drew breath. Ruby Noir is my freedom. My way of releasing the pain I’ve clawed my way through without having it found by those who caused it.

How do I introduce myself to you? Would you like to know the graphic details or the girl behind them? They’re not the same. I write about who I once was to give me room to be who I fought to become. I am two different people.

I am the twirling broken ballerina of my traumatic past, gripped by darkness, drenched in anger, and cloaked in fear.

I am the voice of the voiceless innocent animals that saved me, smiling through clenched teeth, trained to strike, and learning to love.

I write as one so I can live as the other. But they take turns.

I can give you my life in bullet points. It won’t really tell you who I am though, only what I’ve been through. But to know who I am — you need to know what I’ve been through.

• I finally stopped speaking to my mother almost exactly one year ago. First, I endured a lifetime of emotional, mental, and psychological abuse. As a child, it was sometimes physical. Something I lied about for a very long time.
• I started being prepared for my life as a ballerina at the age of two. I was put en pointe at the age of three and broke my first bone at the age of four. That was the same age I was when I learned not to cry from physical pain and dance with a smile on my face despite the agony searing through my body.
• I was five when it was discovered I was allergic to strawberries. My throat swelled and closed and I couldn’t breathe. By the time the ambulance arrived, I was unconscious and my heart had stopped. They performed CPR while attempting to get a tube through the swelling so I could breathe. They were going to do a tracheotomy to get me some air but my mother refused permission because I couldn’t have a scar on stage. She would later tell me she was hoping that I’d die.
• I was seven when I was sent to live at a prestigious ballet academy in Manhattan. I was on my own and officially no longer a child over an hour away from my family.
• I was nine the first time they started giving me opiate painkillers. I would come to break every single one of my toes at least three times each, all of my toenails fell off repeatedly and started growing inward from the damage, and my spine formed at a misshapen angle causing me chronic pain for life. I still need surgeries on my feet but since I have little to no feeling in my toes — I usually just try to do it myself.
• I was 11 when I started to develop an eating disorder and my mother told me she was proud of me for it.
• I was 13 when I began “nutrition training” — words used for parents to cover up the reality of teaching pubescent girls that they were never quite thin enough. I had severe body dysmorphia and still do to this day.
• I was 16 when I was brutally assaulted in my mother’s house while home on a school break. I was knocked unconscious, beaten severely, raped, and left for dead. I was found by my brother who saved my life by getting me to the hospital and then giving me his blood but I still died twice. I had six broken bones, my eyelid was torn in half, my ear drum was burst, my earlobe was almost torn off, and the doctor thought I’d been hit by a truck until it was discovered that my attacker (my ex-boyfriend) had carved his initials into my hip. I spent two months in the hospital and then had to endure a trial because his lawyer insisted he only did it because he was on drugs and should be allowed to go to rehab instead of prison. I won — but the trial was intensely traumatic.
• My mother told the school I’d been in a severe car accident and forced me to repeat her lie and so I lived with the assault alone.
• I was 17 when I was invited to join the New York City Ballet as an official member of the company. My mother liked to brag about it but would not come to see me perform unless I earned a principal role. When I became the Black Swan in Swan Lake — she still didn’t come until her friends wanted to and then she met me backstage and threatened to kill me if I embarrassed her.
• I danced until at the age of 22, I landed badly and tore my upper meniscus cartilage out of my right knee. It was free-floating and I needed surgery to repair it. When I woke up, I was told that even with physical therapy, I would no longer have the dexterity for ballet. I learned what relief felt like — the first emotion I’d allowed myself to feel in years. My mother was angry at me and forbade me from returning to my hometown so I moved in with my boyfriend in Manhattan.
• I got pregnant not long after and didn’t know it. My mother had never taught me about my female body and I hadn’t been allowed to take birth control because of potential weight gain. I rarely had a period because I was so thin. I thought I had a stomach bug. The damage that malnutrition, eating disorders, the assault, and a lifetime of ballet had caused my body made it unable to sustain the pregnancy, and not long after my 23rd birthday I gave birth to a baby boy just shy of 22 weeks along. He only lived for a couple of hours.

That is the darkness of my past. For years, I would write about it and call it fiction. Over time, I started to own the stories. To this day, I’ve never told any of them in full. Some parts are still too painful to face. I’ve never cried for my son. I struggled to break free of my mother. I still have triggers from the assault. I live in the painful body that ballet built.

Now that you know what I went through, I can tell you who I am.

I am a vet tech. I found my voice when I started to speak for animals. After spending so much of my life feeling helpless and voiceless — I felt a kinship with animals. A connection. An understanding that I struggled to achieve with other people. I didn’t trust people. I trusted animals. I am proud of my career. I love what I do. I hope to one day own an animal sanctuary and rescue. I was almost an FBI Agent but that is a whole other story entirely.

I am a wife. I have an amazing husband. Last month was our fourth wedding anniversary and we have been through a lot together. He is my best friend and without him, I couldn’t be me. With him, I’m more myself than I’ve ever been before.

I am a fur mom. My husband and I have six amazing pets — all rescues. Two of them are dogs — one rescued from a fighting ring, the other from an animal hoarder; and four cats. Two of our cats were rescued from the streets of Kuwait. One was thrown from the window of a moving car at a construction site and the other rescued herself. Feral-born and sickly, she walked right up to my husband in a parking lot. She has Cerebellar Hypoplasia (Wobbly Cat Syndrome). One of the Kuwait rescues is blind. But our two special needs cats don’t really need anything special — they are perfectly capable of everything the other cats are. All six of them and the other four animals we’ve lost over the years have been the ones who truly saved me. They, like me, have been hurt, harmed, and pushed through the fires of hell. I, like them, learned to survive.

I am a sister. I have more of my brother’s blood than my own. I wouldn’t be here today if not for him and there was a time that I hated him for it. I am told how strong I am because of what I survived but the truth is, I was an unwilling survivor. I was dragging, kicking and screaming, through it all — mostly by the love of my brother. We are only 19 months apart in age. We are simultaneously very different and eerily similar. It’s hard to explain but easy to see.

I am a fighter for equity and an ally to all. I am often extremely passionate in the fight for anything I believe in and one thing I believe strongly in — is equity. Anyone who feels oppressed or marginalized in any way will find an ally in me. Except rich white male Christians because you’re not marginalized, stop it. I found my first true feeling of safety withing the LGBTQIA+ community who embraced me and gave me respite to dance with wild abandon late into the night at clubs where I didn’t have to be scared. I know how it feels to live your life under attack. I know how it feels to be under someone’s controlling thumb. I know how it feels to be unable to be who you really are and forced to be someone you are not. And so I fight.

I am a writer. I once wrote because it was the only outlet that I had. I came to learn that writing… and being a writer… are two different things. Writing is something you do but ‘writer’ is a personality trait. It is just as much a part of who I am as the dimples on my face and my irreverent sense of humor. I can not tell a simple story because I believe in the power of details. I see stories everywhere I go and in everything I do. I am also a distant relative of Ernest Hemingway, so I see it somewhat as a birthright.

I am my father’s daughter. I am not strong. But I try. I am hard to get to know but easy to understand. I am an adult that never got to be a child, so sometimes I act like one now. I am an atheist. I am someone who knows the power of having a dream. I am someone who survived a nightmare.

I am nothing you’d expect me to be and everything I show you.

Except my name.