Berlin – Almost Dying and Meeting Peter

 

Often people think they should know if death is near. But when we lose touch with parts of ourselves … we go numb and stop feeling certain things. The intent is to turn off the suffering and instead focus on what we want and how we want to come across.

I can now see that … at that time in Berlin, I was more concerned about appearances than I should have been.

I can see that there are those … that we think … we need … to impress.
When the truth probably was that they did not really care about our personal agenda at all.

I really believed … that if I did my job and did not make waves … that the Director would come around.
I wanted to believe that I mattered in the sequence of things. But there are a lot of young women and men that would die for a chance to be on such a magnificent stage.

And clearly … I was one of them.

I had decided (with my mind) to throw myself into my art and to be more amazing than ever.
My ego could not go down without a fight.
Egos are tricky and will peck away at the carcass that we offer up until there is nothing left.

 

We had another performance series and once again, I was getting sick. I had been on the antibiotics for 2 weeks. Then off of them for two weeks, when I started to get sick again.

Once again, Goodrun Leben’s sister (the doctor) to the rescue, and I got another round of the antibiotics.

My mind was so set to keep performing, that I did not even realize … that I might be putting myself in danger.

My classic American mindset thought that when we are sick, we get pills and then we are better. Right?

My immaturity did not know how to look into the emotional, mental causes of physical illness.

I did not know until I was in Ballet West and discovered an amazing Chinese doctor (Dr. Ming) that the Lung Meridian is about Grief and Loss.

The pneumonia was trying to teach me that I was drowning in my own denied sorrow and grief. I was in denial of my own fear. I was grieving the loss of my own idealistic self. And I was grieving the loss of my own innocence.

I could not believe that I would not be released from my contract … legally.

I had never done anything illegal in my life and I did not believe I was guilty of anything but of being naïve enough to trust those in power … that I had hoped … would have my best interest at heart.

Once again, after taking the antibiotics I was feeling better, so I was back in the game of pretending that I was okay when I was anything but.

I did notice some strange tingling in my arms and legs at times.
I did notice that something did not feel quite right inside. But again, dancers are very good at knowing all the tricks to override ourselves in specific moments with our mind.

 

I remember somewhere during this 3-month cycle that my feet started bleeding through my shoes. I noticed it in sort of a detached way.

Such a thing does happen … but not often. Dancers know better than to allow such a wound to fester because feet sweat in point shoes and the salt from the sweat makes every step very painful.

But the Russian training did not allow anyone to take their shoes off in Berlin.
Ballet (at that time) was a boot camp of learning how to handle pain, to know it is there … but to be able to tune it out.
Whether anyone noticed that my feet were bleeding … I don’t remember. Honestly, I was beginning to feel a bit too detached at that point.

What I do remember, is that when I took my shoes off, the air allowed the pain sensors in my toes to activate and all the sudden … the pain was excruciating.
I learned in this process that I could cope with pain … as long as it stayed consistent.
The moment anything changed, the pain would become unbearable. But if I just stayed the course, I could make it through.

 

My body had other ideas. My body had been pushed too far and it was going to have to rest.

At a certain point, no amount of mental control can overcome the touch of the angel of death.

I did not know that angel was there. I had no premonition that just around the corner I would collapse, and my immune system would fail me completely.
I did not know that over-prescribing of antibiotics could kill a person.

I wish I could say that I was warned. But I was so numb that even if angels were screaming at me, I would have been deaf and dumb to what they were trying to tell me.
I was about to hit a wall so hard that I am pretty sure, an angel was trying to knock some sense into me.
I started my third round of antibiotics just before the final performance, with Natalia Markova in Swan Lake.
The show seemed to go fine.

I danced Big Swans, and everything went according to plan.
I went home and fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is waking up and knowing that I was going to die … that I was dying … and that I needed help.

In my fevered brain, the only person that came to mind was John Skripek.

I woke him up out of a sound sleep and said, “John, I think I am dying! I need you to come to the house immediately. I have a terrible fever and I am afraid I am going to pass out.”
For all the details see the video from January 28, 2023, below.

Berlin Ballet – John Skripek and Saving My Life
https://youtu.be/8bX-L8ijEb8

 

 

That woke him up quickly and he said, “Suzanne are you serious!”

And I said yes, I told him that I did not know if I would be awake or alive when he got here.
He rushed over in a cab and found me lying across the door to the front of my building and he carried me back into my apartment and saved my life by putting me in cooling water and calling his friend a doctor to make an impossible house call in the middle of the night.

I am delirious from the fever of 104 degrees and everything that night is fuzzy.

He told me later that I was speaking and saying odd things and was not responding to commands.

I remember hearing John and the doctor shouting at me. I could hear their words, but I could not respond.
Eventually the doctor managed to turn the fever down a notch and the doctor figured out that my immune system had collapsed from the massive doses of antibiotics.

I do not remember much after that for 3 weeks.

I don’t remember the hospital at all. Nothing! Not one moment.

I don’t remember getting to Chissy Stegers house (the person in the theater that made wigs and the costumes). I don’t remember anything until I woke up in Chisssy’s house with a parrot speaking German to me and singing songs.
By the time I got back to the theater, I did not even know how bad I looked until I looked into those unforgiving mirrors in the studio.
In that moment, I realized that I looked like death barely warmed over.
I had lost a lot of weight; and my skin was sallow and pale. I was weak as a puppy. And had trouble just getting through class.
That is when I realized how expendable I really was. Things had gone on without me. I saw that I had been trying to kill myself for a director that really did not care how I was feeling, or if I lived or died.
I realized that I had little knowing of how to listen to what I needed. And I realized that if I did not care about myself nobody else probably would either.

It was a major wake up call.
As I am getting back on my feet. So much is a blur. I felt loosely tethered to my body. And I was trying to just get stamina back.

I go to a friend’s house for an evening dinner and that is where I met Peter.

Now, Peter was a student at the Freie Universität Berlin. He was in economics and was adorably cute. He parents owned two hotels in Flensburg (a city on the coast of northern Germany just before you go into Denmark).
I am not even totally sure what we talked about that first meeting. As I said, I was pretty out of it. My head and heart seemed to be moving in two different directions. A part of me was in Berlin but another part of me was not. And I am not sure where that other part was.

Upon reflection, I think the angels brought him in to give me much needed energy at a point when I was the weakest I can ever remember being.
He spoke English well. He was funny and smart. He seemed more confident, than I did at that point.

After the dinner with friends, he got my phone number from them and called me. We talked on the phone a few times and then he asked me out for a walk in Wansee. This area is a park with lakes and beaches. A favorite place to sunbathe, swim, and walk in the summer.

By now, it was coming into spring but getting out for a walk and some fresh air was a great idea. Besides, Peter, had a gorgeous new BMV. He picked me up and whisked me away from the dancing drama and into a very different reality.

Peter had the ability to make me laugh and he loved those flying kites (that back then were popular) that one could spin in the air.

He was very good and knowing how to make them catch the wind just right and twist around in the breeze.

I found myself laughing and smiling. A spark of hopefulness pierced the gloom of the past 7 months of tremendous effort and struggle.

I was breathing rather than holding my breath waiting for the next hit to come.

I found my guarded nature softening and I have to say that I was enjoying my time with him.

And that was a first!
I did not really fraternize with anyone outside the theater. Dancers have a sort of tunnel vision.

Be was kind, generous, and seemed to be much less uptight than I was.

He was refreshingly different. He talked about the economics program that he was in and I shared the insane journey I was on with a person who seemed genuinely interested.
He had light brown to slightly reddish hair. He was tall and he had a well-groomed beard.
We continued to date and he seemed to really want to get closer.

But that was something that I did not really know how to do. I had spent my life holding my own in a world that demanded every inch of energy from me. And I saw that I had never really “dated”. I felt awkward, unsure, deeply insecure, and overly cautious after the French, Jewish Doctor.
But Peter was more interested in giving to me rather than taking more from me.

That was at least very different.

I had a 3 day break and he said that we could drive up to Flensberg to see his home town and that we could stay for free at his parents Hotel.
That sounded like a dream because all my finances were tied up in paying for a lawyer.
I had explained the situation with the Berlin Ballet and that I had a contract with Ballet West and that I was going to take that contract. I wanted him to know that I had no intention of staying in Berlin. He seemed to take that well because we were just at the beginning.

Later, it would become clear that he was getting more attached than I was. And that would end up being a huge problem.
But at that moment, he seemed to want to just be in the moment.

At those moments when young people are trying to figure out how to dive deep into the “horizonal mambo”, I was trying to figure out how to even begin this dance.
I told Peter the truth which was that I did not know the first steps in this dance, and he was stunned.

I was a virgin ballerina and fortunately that made him respectful and cautious.

I am pretty sure it scared him … as well as me.
But we were having a great time getting to know each other and the chemistry was there and he was not pushy.

Self-control is always something I respect in a person. Being a dancer on stage, I loved to play with the energies of passion, attraction, and the magnetic pulls of sexual energy. I knew how to build up the energies but did not know where to go from there.

There is a moment when one decides to leap. But as a careful and calculating dancer, great care and preparation was needed to do something well.

That meant, “No, nine month later … surprises!”
I knew (from the time I was a child) that I was never going to be a mother. I don’t know how I knew that … but I did. It was a place of certainty that was not a question in my mind. My life was about clearing karma not creating more of it. I had observed that most people give birth to their disowned selves. My very Catholic, up-tight mother gave birth to a wildly tempestuous ballerina and my sister was a smart, detailed doctor. We were what she might have craved but did not know how to generate in her own world.
Regardless, I knew that I had to be the one responsible.

So off to the doctors office I went to get the birth control so that mistakes would not happen.

What I did not know at that time was that I was born infertile.

I did not know until I was 38, that everything in my body was twisted around inside to the right. My ovary on the right side was in the middle of my body and my kidney on the left side was inside my spleen and I was missing an adrenal on that kidney.

Oh, and my uterus was in the shape of a pinecone. Not just the outside of the pinecone but the odd shapes on the inside as well.

Children would be out of the question on any day but at the time I did not know all that and I was not going to make a crucial mistake now. I could not afford it and I did not want to say in Germany.

I go to the doctor, and I am so paranoid that I get the pills and a diaphragm with the cream. I figured it was best to have double coverage against all invaders.
At that time in Germany, the pill they used was a very low dosage estrogen. I would find out later in America that such a thing did not exist yet. The pills I the US were so strong that once again, those pills were going to almost kill me.

I did not know at this time that I had too much estrogen in my system. And while the German pills did not push me over the top … later in America the American’s inability to even have honest conversations about birth control because of all the puritanical upbringing, that they were not allowing in the latest studies and types of pills as I had in Germany. Our health organizations were backwards and would not allow the European technologies to get approved in American. Our country would only allow for such strong pills that they would cause me suffering that again … seemed to want to break my mental and emotional stability.
But for now, I was set and just looking for that right moment.

That moment came before we did our trip to Flensburg.
We were at my apartment and “making out” when I told him that I wanted to make love to him.

Instead of being excited … he stopped cold.

Startled, I asked him what was wrong.

He said, that maybe we should think more about this!

I looked at him in astonishment and said, “Are you kidding me! We have spent months getting to know each other and I spent weeks getting all things prepared and now that I feel safe and want to try something very scary … you are saying No!”
He said, “No! I don’t want to say No! I just don’t want to hurt you in any way!”
That is when I realized that he was just as scared for me as I was. That was something very new and interesting.

We talked about it at great length and he slowly came around and we decided to explore this option slowly and carefully.

Peter was a gentleman on all levels. He was kind, careful, considerate, gentle spirited and I am sure for a first time lover, I could not have picked better.

In fact, there are moments when one does not know what we have because we have nothing to compare it too.

Afterward, he said to me, “Are you sure you have never done this before? Because that was awesome!”

That made me very happy because I really did not know what I was doing.
But what I am good at is going with the flow. And I found the horizontal mambo to be quite … exhilarating!

~Suzanne Wagner~