My Heaven and Hell

My name is Ruth Gordon. I was born in Switzerland in 1950 and left at the age of 16 to pursue my ballet career. This journey brought me to England in 1969 where I met Simon Gordon, a fine ballet pianist and conductor, in 1978. Two weeks later we were married. Unbeknownst to me Simon had suffered from Schizophrenia since the age of 11. In 1980 I gave birth to our son Matthew. Simon's grandmother (a huge influence on his life) died in 1981, incepting an episode of Simon's latent Schizophrenia which culminated in him kidnapping Matthew, beating me and finally committing suicide. During this period, both Simon and I wrote diaries which are the central components of this book. These diaries display the differences in how we experienced this time of difficulty and hopefully convey the raw emotions of this time.