As I write this, I am crying. I have been now, off and on, since the story broke and as it builds.

In case you are wondering why I am not all over this story, after being all over the Kavanaugh resistance for other reasons, it is because this story is all over me.

Hearing the story repeated, watching Kavanaugh deny the incident, backlash from Trump supporters, trolls and creeps trying to deny and abuse Dr. Christine Blasely Ford is, literally, making me sick.

Go over the writings of his buddy, conservative writer Mark Judge, who that was in the room, jumping on top of Kavanaugh, who had Christine Blasely pinned down on the bed. In his 2005 book Wasted, now out of print but with damning details in this Mother Jones report.

https://www.motherjones.com/poli...

Judge wrote a book about the heavy binge-drinking in Georgetown Prep, where the drinking parties became so bad the priests instituted mandatory community service on Saturdays, because the situation was so out of control. Kavanaugh claims "not to remember," which is a lie if you judge by how quickly he found "65 women who knew him in high school" to sign a letter affirming his good character, just a day after the story broke. Kavanaugh went to a boy's high school. Even if he didn't, how many men even knew 65 girls in high school? Let alone ones who could be contacted and respond in 24 hours to defend your honor?

As this story unfolded, I became sick. Physically sick, in bed. And the mental distress soon followed. As each news report detailed the experience, over and over, the words "pinned her to the bed, and held his hand over her mouth" repeated over and over brought back memories I have tried to reconcile, to forget, to get over, with counseling and PTSD therapy.

Let me start with the numbers of the women in my immediate family who have been sexually attacked. 100%. That's right. 100% of my women family members have been seriously sexually attacked. Outside of harassment, outside of "groping" or "unwanted touching." Attacked, including rape. Including me. Including my sisters, including my mother. 100%.

It brought back memories, and yesterday, a memory I had not thought about for a long, long time, one that finally broke down my anger into grief.

I was 13, babysitting with my girlfriend at her parent's. Her younger siblings were asleep in her parent's room. We were watching TV. Then her brother came in, drunk. Really drunk. I don't remember what I said, but I remember he had made sexual remarks about me before. This time, I said something that made him mad, and he came after me. To "teach me a lesson." What followed was a room-to-room battle, with my girlfriend trying to help me as the battle moved down the hall to the bedrooms, her trying to help me close the doors. I used a wire hanger as a weapon. I don't remember how she was split off from me, but the last room was just me, with him pushing on the door with all his substantial strength, so drunk he could not feel the welts I was raising on his arms. The last bedroom was dark, I couldn't stop fighting long enough to switch on the light. In the window headlights showed. It was his parents pulling in the driveway, and the pressure on the door was gone.

The battle was over.

Yet it would never be over, it is never over when you are sexually attacked.

I won't give you all the details of being almost raped in the back seat of the car at the drive in. Just to say that I was a strong girl, and when I popped that back door open, I fled.

The third time, I was date-raped at a party, well into adulthood. Too old, I thought, to worry about being sexually attacked. Not even thinking about leaving my drink unattended. Mercifully, almost all those details are still a blank. I woke up on a couch, with my clothes scattered on the floor, my money gone. I rode home on the bus in the cold light of dawn, the only passenger on a cold October Sunday, staring out the window into a cold, empty landscape. I went into my house and showered until I ran out of hot water. When I woke up later I showered some more.

I had to wait six months to be sure I hadn't gotten HIV.

It only occurred to me this weekend that I could have died then and there.

I am not done. The same weekend this story broke, a female family member got raped at a party. She is over fifty, but her age didn't protect her. The friends who were supposed to keep her safe didn't notice she had disappeared, or if they did, they thought she had left the party. She spent the day at the hospital. Rape kit. Police reports. Guilt and shame. Now she has to wait, six months, to see if she tests positive for HIV. Her memory is blurry, and she suspects she was drugged.

Take a poll of your own female family members. I would be willing to bet that percentage is pretty close to 100% of the adult women in your family.

I don't want to go all over the details of Christine's story. You know them. You can't get away from them, and now, because her story was leaked, neither can she. She is a Doctor of Psychology, a professor at Palo Alto, a graduate of Stanford University, who has counseling notes from 2012 about the incident. Her husband knows the story. She has taken a lie detector test with the FBI, that says she is telling the truth. Now she has to go through all of it, the original trauma and all the trolls who are questioning her credibility, victim-blaming, excusing the perpetrator. And now I do too.

Kavanaugh remembers. Christine Blasely Ford remembers. Everyone this has ever happened to remembers. We are never, ever allowed to forget. We don't go in elevators where there are lone men. We watch behind us when we walk, check our cars before we get in, listen for cues that a man might be threatening, are wary of strangers and mistrustful of men. We never, ever forget.

I can't follow the thread on Quora, as men and worse, women, defend and deny. I am sick. Sick all over. Again.