CANCER - From the Outside Looking in

OUR LIVES BEFORE CANCER ARRIVED - Chapter 1

Steven and I met in 1984 at my place of employment. He used to come and repair the computers when we had faults. We hit it off right away and became very good friends. In 1985 he went off to do his two-year national service and we unfortunately lost contact. When he had completed his service mid-1987, I managed to locate him again at the company he had worked at before he did his service. We started dating and bought a flat together early in 1988. At the end of that year, we got engaged and got married on the 20th of October 1989.

At the beginning of 1993 we bought our house. We had, had our problems while living in the flat because it was considered to be Steven's place and I thought that once we had now bought our house, which belonged to both of us, that all would change. Yet I was sadly mistaken. Steven continued to be extremely dominating and particular about everything. Things had to be Steven's way or no way at all. I had very little say over how things would be done around the house or in our lives and had no choices of my own. Between Steven's domination and my own depression, which was getting progressively worse, my doctor advised that I get professional help from a therapist and go onto anti-depressants, which I did.

I was not on the medication very long when I found out that I was pregnant and stopped them. I was so happy I was going to have a baby that my depression seemed to go away. I assumed that was the end of it. On Thursday the 10th of March 1994 at 11:10am our first son Travis was born.

We continued to have our ups and downs as most marriages have but it seemed we were having more downs than ups and I didn't know if it would ever be normal. At the beginning of 1996 Steven's parents who had been renting our flat moved in with us due to us selling the flat. This put even more strain on our marriage as I was also pregnant at the time. Then on Tuesday the 24th of September 1996 at 7:50am our other son Sheldon was born.

I felt as if I had finally gotten everything that I had always hoped and dreamt of having, a complete family and a home filled with love and joy.

This was however not to be. Things between Steven and I just got worse by the day until one day I could not take him and his parents anymore and I took my children and went to stay with my own parents. The closer it got to the end of 1997 I told Steven that he would have to make a choice. Either his parents leave our house, and he allows us to move back or I file for divorce. They finally found their own place to live in the October and the boys and I moved back home.

However, by this time our marriage was practically destroyed and there seemed no way to bridge the gap that had been created between us. We tried numerous different approaches but none of them seemed to work. We ended up spending more time arguing, fighting and talking about getting divorced than trying to discuss ways to fix the problem. I eventually even stated to Steven that to mend something which is cracked is a lot easier than to mend something that has been broken into pieces. However, for some unknown reason we never did get divorced. I guess we had become accustomed to the problems and did still care for each other very much, so we just kept plodding along, day after day, month after month and eventually also year after year.