I am home dealing with some medical issues, so I took the opportunity to watch the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

I debated whether to post this, whether to go public with this. But watching Kavanaugh rage in his opening statement, listening to his partisan rant, and hearing him play the victim, seeing his crocodile tears and the disrespect he is showing women on the committee, I felt I needed to speak up. First, setting aside any sexual assault allegations, this man is a partisan bully who has no business serving on any court, let alone the Supreme Court.

But it is the sexual assault allegations, and the absolute rage and victimhood with which he denied them, that compels me to speak. Like most women, I have my own decades-old stories. Yes, stories – more than one.

One incident occurred when I was in my late teens, in my very own bedroom. A family member’s friend, a few years younger than me, was at the house. I was in my own room, lying on the bed studying or reading , when he came in and locked the door behind him. He climbed on to my bed and made his way toward me. I put up my foot – or perhaps it was my knee – to block his way. I remember him making the kind of “come on, it will be fun” or “you know you want to ” comments that are often said in those situations as I pushed him away, making whatever excuses I could think of. Eventually I pushed him off the bed and physically pushed him out of the room as he laughed. To this day, 3 decades later, I still don’t know if it was all a big joke and he was messing around with me or if he would have done something had I not resisted. For years, I dismissed it as the former, but could never dismiss the possibility it was the latter and that he was testing how far he could push. I have lived with it for years, impacting me in ways I probably still don’t realize. And, no, I never told anyone about it until recently.

The second incident was a couple years later, when I was traveling alone in Prague. I was 19 or 20 and traveling alone (before Prague really opened up to international tourism). I was walking back to my relative’s apartment, where I was staying. Two guys (around my age?) came up to me and started walking beside me, one on either side. One tried to put his arm around me which I shrugged off. I tried to ignore them as best I could and kept walking a little faster but, moments later, as we approached an alley, one of them tried to guide, then shove me into the alley. I ducked and started running toward an open bar/restaurant I could see down the street. They didn’t follow – they just stood there laughing. To this day, I don’t know if they were just fucking with the tourist, if they intended to rob me or worse. I still look askance any time I’m walking alone and someone gets too close. Again, I never reported it, although I think I may have mentioned it to people about it over the years. I was a foreigner traveling in a country that was recently emerging from Communism – who was I going to report it to?

If we go back even farther, there was the time when I was in elementary school and wearing really short shorts (it was the 70s) while at the grocery store with my mom.  My mom was some distance away. An old man came up to me and said he could see my panties. I think he probably meant well, as disconcerting as it was. I think he was just saying I should cover up – I don’t recall anything lewd about it. But still… even if it was just a man telling a girl how to dress/behave, it has stuck with me for 4 decades.

I can guarantee you that not a single one of the men involved in my decades-old incidents remember them. I guarantee you no one nearby at the time remembers them.  But I do. They will forever be seared into my memory. I may not remember every detail, but I remember the incidents. I remember the men. I remember the laughter.

For these reasons and the millions of other stories out there, I believe Christine Blasey Ford and believe Brett Kavanaugh is unfit for the highest court in our land.