Today, I want to tell you the story of a girl named Zane.
I knew Zane when we were in 8th grade. She was 4'9" and the absolute sweetest human being you can imagine. She's one of those people whose cheeks were always just a little bit rosy and who talked in a soft, light voice that made her naturally curly hair seem to bounce. She was a passionate ballerina and she reminded most people of a fairy.
One time, when we were all freshmen, Zane gave up sugar for months by accident, and then realized that she hadn't eaten any processed sugar for a while, and decided to give it up indefinitely. It was just her and her mom at home, and they both ate like birds, so neither of them even noticed when they both starting avoiding sugar! She was all-organic before it was cool.
We weren't extraordinarily close, but we were in the same friend group and I sat by her in Ethics (where we talked daily), so when she switched schools, I was one of 6 people invited to her going-away party. As I said, she was quiet, so I'm sure that that seemed like an enormous group to her! All 8 of us gathered (me + 5 friends + her + her mom) at her house and piled around a delicate wood table with three small plates; one had approximately 11 pretzels, another had one sleeve of whole grain crackers, and the last held one bundle of grapes. This was her idea of party food, and I'm pretty sure I cleared out the table in under a minute. :)
When we were sophomores (her last year at Marshall), Zane started to get sick. She missed school for a couple days and then came back with a twitch. She had been to Urgent Care, because she couldn't control her arm movements, but they didn't see anything wrong. Of course, you can imagine how devastating this was, considering she planned a long career as a ballerina. For her, this would only be possible at her height if she was the best (prima ballerina), because she was too short to fit into the backup line without it looking uneven. All of a sudden, this girl who poured her whole self into the graceful movements of her body on stage could no longer control her arms. That year, she had played Marie in the Nutcracker, which was also the last year that my family went to see it performed. She showed up to Ethics the next day with almost ridiculously twitching arms, but still a smile on her face.
A couple weeks later, she and her mom left to go to the Mayo for more extensive testing. Her body still twitched, but even the neurological scans found nothing conclusive. Possibly Tourette's Syndrome, they said, but no one really knew what was wrong. As the semester went on, Zane started to fall behind on her school work, because all of her free (non-twitching) moments were devoted to ballet, not homework. One day, Signe and I found her in the bathroom crying, because the history teacher had refused to give her another extension, which might mean failing the course. Infuriated, we marched with Zane to the history room and demanded mercy for her softly sobbing soul, threatening even to boycott the class or tell the head of school about his less-than-kind treatment of sweet, sick Zane. Though we earned the permanent dislike of the history teacher (who we had fired the next year), we walked proudly out with Zane, now smiling through her tears.
She did make it through that school year, finally, and decided to move to a school in Boston that would allow her to focus more on ballet and less on busy work. She had just learned to control her arm movements for periods of time while on stage, so she could make it through whole performances, although her twitches would be much worse for the next few hours. By this time, even her head and neck were twitching.
I hadn't kept up with Zane for years. She wasn't on Facebook, and we weren't close enough to write letters. I probably mentioned her to you a couple times, though, either when you gave up sugar, or when ballet was talked about, or maybe even when the Mayo was brought up, but you can imagine my surprise when she was mentioned at coffee with a high school friend today, because it had been so long since I had thought about her. Today, I learned the rest of her story.
From all appearances, she continued to excel at ballet for several years after she moved to Boston, but her condition continued to worsen. No one knew what was wrong until sometime last year, when she finally confided in her parents. The summer before her sophomore year, she was raped at ballet camp. She was so small that she hadn't even gotten her period yet. Who could have imagined that someone so pure would ever be violated in such a violent way?
That year, the shame and anxiety from the rape developed into unexplained twitches. Because she hadn't told anyone, no one understood that the movements were her body's way of expressing how not-right her mind had become. Zane the Fairy began to spiral into a deepening depression, vaguely evident in some of her blog posts from more recent years. Her depression and the pressure of ballet gradually worsened into a severe eating disorder, and her already-tiny figure didn't have much weight to lose before the problem became life-threatening.
Sometime last year, Zane was put onto nutritional supplements and a carefully watched diet. Despite continued efforts from her family to keep her healthy, she stopped taking her supplements earlier this year. Three months ago, she was put into hospice care because her organs began to fail, and last month, on May 13th, she died, destroyed by the psychological effects of a horrendous crime that nobody knew about.
Jesus, bring Zane into Your arms and restore her delicate soul. Send comfort to her family and friends and remind those touched by tragedy of Your easy yoke. Offer an end to her suffering of many years with the light of Your face, and care for your wounded daughter.
Ponder love today.
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