Hi All. N here.
Update: Monica clearly unwell. She faces a battery of tests beginning on Sunday. She thanks you for the messages of goodwill both the public and the private ones.
As the possibly of being the first trans person to post on this thread, and with the confluence of Monica's illness, my temporary presence here, and the anniversary of a world event today, I beg your forgiveness for an indulgence.
I was beaten as a child over a number of years from the age of three. I made my parents angry for saying 'I know that I am not a boy'. I didn't know what a girl was, in the anatomical sense that is. At one point in my primary school years, I was beaten to within in an inch of my life by my father. Another day on the brink of suicide I escaped my locked bedroom by jumping from the window of a three storey town house. Finding myself still alive, I knew only one safe place to be - with Aunty Monkers. She took me in and by eventual agreement with my mother, I never returned to the house of horror.
In my first days, what Monica did was to put what seemed a huge poster on my wall - The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Alongside that was a kind of advent calendar she made. ''Here's the deal'' she said''; '' this is your forever home on just one condition. You are to learn this word perfect. These are your rights, this is your passage to freedom.'' I became hooked on it, I beat her advent calendar requirement to learn it by some margin.
When I attended secondary school, I was quite the little expert. And I was shocked when I found that no teacher in that school could begin to explain the content of it. At 13, I started a 'rights and freedom' after school club. It's in my blood. I am now a lawyer inevitably with a human rights specialism working in Strasbourg.
I am not trans because I was abused (the usual trope), I was abused because I was not a boy. I was not converted by others. I was not groomed. My father had wanted a boy, instead he got me.
I was not on the internet. There was no peer pressure to be different. To the contrary, there was peer pressure to conform to 'norms'. There was bullying by my peers, and by some teachers. This didn't last because Monica knew how to handle it.
I'm sitting in her empty-feeling house now, typing on her laptop. It's a strange empty feeling sitting among the things she loves, and I have fresh perspective - there is her piano, tuned to concert pitch, her magnificent hi-fi system, books and CDs that seem too many to count, and her Trek Emonda sitting pride of place in the lounge.
So in the last days, I've played her piano, and noticed for the first time just how fine it is. I've played her hi-fi, and the sound is jaw-dropping. Yesterday I rode her Emonda over Portsdown Hill, and what a machine.
I'm telling you this, because this is the home that shaped me. It was never a house full of my toys littering every room. Instead she occupied that space with her love and her time. How could two sisters (Monica and my mother) ever be so different? And I am glad, for the learning, of growing up knowing what counts, and for the love.
Today is an important day, and I shall miss being in Strasbourg. Today is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights. It's a big day in my office and I shall miss it.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
This is my little story. It deserves no reply.