Sue Randall

Johannesburg, South Africa

What is the one word that describes you? Aspiring

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1965. My parents were teachers and anti-apartheid publishers, so naturally I grew up opposed to apartheid. My father was 'banned' by the apartheid government in 1977, and we all suffered through this. I'm really proud of my parents for their small role in helping to end apartheid. Most whites just sat back and enjoyed their privileged status.

As a child, I loved ballet dancing. I wanted to become a ballerina. That changed a few days before my tenth birthday, when a dog belonging to my ballet teacher nearly bit my left eye out of my face. Soon afterwards the dog bit a baby, and had to be put down. A short while later my beloved ballet teacher killed herself. I was devastated, and thought that everything was my fault.

Not only was I suddenly not doing ballet any more, I was now also walking around wearing a black eye-patch. My mother told me that the boys were jealous of me because I looked like a pirate. I didn't want to look like a pirate; I wanted to be pretty. But my face was all torn up. And throughout my childhood, my mother had made me keep my hair short. My hair was fine and thin, and she said it would thicken out if it was kept short. I wanted it to grow long, but she wouldn't allow that.

My older sister and I were often dressed in boys' clothes, and we were often mistaken for boys. One afternoon, while I was clippety-clopping around the house in a skirt and sandals with little heels, feeling proudly feminine and fiddling with my mother's sewing things, my father scolded me for having woken him from his afternoon nap. I never wore those sandals again, and I even started disliking skirts. So I grew up feeling very confused about my femininity. In high school I had to wear braces on my teeth, and I had scars around my left eye, and I was the shortest girl in the class, and I believed I was the ugliest girl on earth.

Luckily, one thing neither I nor my parents ever doubted was my intelligence. When I was seventeen and started having boyfriends, I couldn't believe that they thought that they were so much smarter than me. They seemed more interested in feeling me up than having a real conversation. I turned gay. After two horrible brief, early relationships, I found the woman with whom I would spend the next nine years of my life, and we were very happy together. We set up home and kept cats and dogs; she was a career girl and I was the academic and voluntary-work type.

While I was with her I came to terms with many of my emotional problems, and she did a lot of growing up too. We were good together, but eventually we outgrew each other. She became more and more absorbed in the business world and I became increasingly drawn to a spiritual path. I went through great challenges in my thirties, and amongst other things I was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus. I left my lover, and eventually moved to a new city, where I knew no-one and could not find a job. It became clear to me during this time that my sexual orientation was shifting. I was celibate for a while.

I was also driven into by a drunk driver, which was very stressful, and soon after that, by prior arrangement, I went to Taiwan to teach English. But after three months I became critically ill and underweight, and had to return home, having lost every cent and every remnant of my health and dignity. I spent the next three years in Johannesburg, struggling to overcome ME / CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome). I felt I was never going to be able to carry on with a normal city life, and my interest in a spiritual path was stronger than ever. I went to church and considered becoming a Christian nun, and I also joined a Buddhist meditation group.

Eventually, in December 2003, once my health was a lot better and I could do some work, I moved to a Buddhist retreat centre in some mountains not far from Johannesburg. In early 2004 I became involved with one of the men there, and we are still together. My health is good these days, and with the help of a Chinese herbal remedy I recently got rid of a fibroid and avoided having a hysterectomy. I have completed a Master's degree in research psychology, and I'm also a fiction writer. My novels are about Buddhism in the Western world, and one of my main themes is the situation of women in Buddhism.