Excerpt from Christine Blasey Ford’s Opening Statement and Notes:

I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.

She is terrified. She has been terrified. She will be terrified. After 40 years, she will speak, and the terror will only grow. Terror is a white-hot fire that burns like ice; it heats the soul until it crystalizes like shattered glass. The sharp edges rub against her throat. If she had a daughter, she would flinch a little, like a shiver, every time her little girl walked out the door.  

I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I have described the events publicly before. I summarized them in my letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, and again in my letter to Chairman Grassley.

The people in the tall-backed chairs, one woman and one man. They look at her like stones who blink and breath. Are they moved? Are they worthy? Do they believe?

  I understand and appreciate the importance of your hearing from me directly about what happened to me and the impact it has had on my life and on my family.

Her reputation is in their hands. A woman’s reputation is her life. Her life is in their hands.

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I attended the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1980 to 1984. Holton-Arms is an all-girls school that opened in 1901. During my time at the school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, country clubs, and other places where kids and their families socialized.

Teenage girls in skirts and knee-socks, desperate for the male gaze. Starved. Giggling. They practically ask for it.

This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.

Enter the villain. Begin the end.

In my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett’s for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended.

There it is: she parties. She drinks. She deserves.

We did not know each other well, but I knew him, and he knew me. In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent almost every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland swimming and practicing diving. One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I remember my friend Leland Ingham attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur of the moment gathering. I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to.

Of course she doesn’t remember. OF COURSE SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER. The worst moments of our lives are the ones we must forget. Her brain tried to protect her. It knew that she needed to get up and to brush her teeth and to put on her shoes and to walk out the door and to smile. Every day. And it knew she couldn’t do that if she remembered the beating of her heart, the adrenaline, the eyes dilating in fear, the unthinkable, the pain. So she forgot. And forty years later, in a room full of strangers and him, she begs forgiveness for being human.

But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.

When something happens, it lives in your bones. In your tissues, your sinew, your DNA. Memory lives in the body. She knows exactly what happened.

Process notes:

I think my main challenge in writing this piece was changing the tone I took in my notes. Sometimes, I wanted to be sarcastic and voice what detractors said about Ford, and at other moments, I wanted to be completely earnest. I’m still not sure if I executed this in a way that made sense but I did enjoy working on it. Another fear I had was that I could not presume to know what was going on in Dr. Ford’s head at this time and I wanted to make sure I took creative license in a way that was appropriate. I think that is a general concern I have when writing about intense moments that have happened to people.