After Kavanaugh: what I need from the men I love.
What one woman needs from the men in her life following last week’s hearings.
I wasn’t prepared for the rage.
I was prepared to weep, to feel alone, to feel exhausted. I was prepared for irritation and heartache. And as I watched Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, all of that came in time. I wept as she wept, waves of hot tears came like monsoons to my searing, red face.
Like many others, I found myself astonished at her composure, her clarity, her forthrightness in the face of this: reliving a major trauma in front of a nation prepared to pick it apart for their own satisfaction and political allegiances. Following in the footsteps of Anita Hill, Dr. Ford said she knew what might await her. As she put it, she might have thrown herself in front of a moving train, only to see that train pick up speed and annihilate her in the process. She may yet be right.
I knew the undertow of my grief would catch me during Dr. Ford’s testimony, but for Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, I expected only irritation. As he spoke, though, something shifted in me: a tectonic movement that couldn’t be undone. An earthquake through the whole world of me.
