Experiences that don't actually happen to you

I've been tuning into the hearings lately and I keep having two recurring memories that are DEFINITELY skewing my perspective of MY TAKE on what's going down.

Here is the deal.  This entire saga is completely bipartisan.  Any way you look at it.

We all feel like we want to feel based on the testimony from both parties, with just a PINCH of our own political beliefs.  I am not a political person and I normally shy away from either a political or religious debate.  That being said.  This is different.  This feels PERSONAL.

I have no AGENDA other than to give a human perspective to this very heated political debate.

Here is how I feel, and I will give you some anecdotes and situations along the way so that you may empathize with the conclusions I have come to.

I was never raped.  Nor was I ever sexually assaulted.  Thank God.  I did, however, volunteer at the Rape Crisis Center during college.

Contrary to popular belief, if you know my personality, you would assume that I was a major player in high school and college.

Writing that just made me giggle.

My point is that I think that because you are outgoing and raw at times, that you are sexually active. 

I was a MAJOR virgin queen before I met Brad.  I guess his obvious virulence changed all that.  But, for some reason it was always a fear of mine that I would get raped before I lost my virginity and truly even after that. 

I don't know where this fear came from - maybe it was a combination of my Catholic upbringing and my Mom's insistence that she was a virgin on her wedding night.  My brother was born nine months to the day of their wedding, so once I was old enough to do the math, I realized she was a liar, but STILL.

In undergrad and graduate school, I volunteered for the Rape Crisis Center.  You went through a weekend long training and then you were assigned 12 hour shifts when the center was closed where you would be "on call" to answer any calls that came in from "clients" during that time.

We were taught as counselors that there are three rapes after an assault - the crime, the evidence collection and the cross examination if it ever went to court.  Rapes were notoriously hard to prosecute and sexual assault was just downright impossible.

You were assigned either the night or weekend shift a few times per week.  I usually took weeknights, but like any job, they would schedule you as they needed you.  I don't know WHY I am remembering what I am remembering but I guess it has been residing in my "brain stem".

Mostly, I would get young girls or women who needed to talk out experiences they had had, involving RAPE or SEXUAL ASSAULT, that had happened weeks or decades ago.

They were all the same.  Terrified to admit it really happened. That was a common theme.  But once the flood gates opened, they remembered every sordid detail.  EVERY FUCKING DETAIL of the RAPE and it's aftermath.

They would often describe how they left their body, both during the act and after, as if it were happening to someone else.

But they could tell you the smell and the other tactile parts as if it were happening in real time.

So let's switch gears to my OTHER recurring memory in my sorority house. 

There was a group of us that used to all do our homework and projects in the dining room on the weekends and whenever there wasn't a meal about to be served. 

We had these expansive floor to ceiling windows on all sides of the dining room and we would work together on our various majors and bullshit.

I was a Senior and there was this Sophomore in the house that I was particularly fond of.  My mom made me live in the house for three years so that she just had "one bill" to pay so I was in a house at time with 18-year-olds when I was 21.

There was a world of difference between us, but there were some underclassmen that I just ADORED and she was one of them.  I can only describe her as a hippie that lit up every room.

She was short and gorgeous and kind and smart and on this fine Sunday afternoon, confiding.

She was upset because a boy that was being nominated for Class President had tried to rape her at a frat party when she was a Freshman.

It was just the two of us in that big room, she was working on an Art project and I was doing some phantom advertising campaign for a pregnancy test that no one in my class would understand.  I could have picked ANY product or service in the universe and I was working on a story board for a commercial where (and hand drawn might I add) a couple who did NOT want a baby who was taking a pregnancy test and they were relieved so that they could resume their AWESOME childless lives.

At least I had them married, right?  Saturday Night Live would spoof this very same scenario years later, using casual daters, but at least I was ahead of my time.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_speedtest&hsimp=yhs-pty_speedtest&hspart=pty&p=snl+pregnancy+test+commercial#id=1&vid=1033c1f46ef4add5a168d52e4c5f700e&action=click

I got a C from my perplexed Octogenarian professor.

Anyway, we are alone in the late afternoon in the dining room, she at a large table all to herself, and me, with a table catty corner to hers toward the front.

"I'm just upset," she said, as we leaned over our respective dining tables with the chairs stacked up neatly in the corner. "I KNOW what I should do, but who will believe me?  I never thought he would make it this far.  I've watched him ascend through the ranks, and I have kept quiet, but now he might be PRESIDENT and he should not be making decisions for the rest of us, when he is a dirtbag.  It has been making me SICK."

She proceeded to tell me how she was at a party with a bunch of people and they were drinking and playing pool and somehow she and the Presidential candidate were alone and he locked the door and forced himself on her and she was saying "NO!" and then she was saved when someone interrupted and knocked on the door which startled him and she got away, unlocked the door and fled the house.

I advised her to do nothing, that the ODDS were against her.  I was scared.  Scared that she would ruin her life and he would prevail anyway.  The ol' boy network in Lexington was a strong one.

She agreed, and did nothing and I do not remember if he became President or not but my takeaway is  that I gave her shitty advice.  I should have promised to be her ride or die, her chief advertising counsel, instead of her non-I'm just trying to graduate friend.  She reached out to me and instead of being a support system and a champion, I was complicit and a coward.

She, now, is an artist in New York City and we follow each other on Insta.  I don't know if she reads this blog or not, but if she, YOU are, consider it an apology.  I wish I had been stronger and more mature and a better friend.

Back to The Rape Crisis Center.  So, it was pretty RARE that during your shift you would have to meet a client at the hospital to act as a representative for a RAPE victim because NO ONE EVER REPORTED ONE at the time of the assault.  However, one night on my shift, I was called to act as a liaison from our center to a victim while she waited for backup from family or friends.

I do not remember any other clients but HER and this is what I remember.

She was a prostitute.  The smell was unbearable.  I held her hand while they performed the exam.  She was inconsolable. I vomited.  She was treated like shit by the cops taking her statement.  The medical team was amazing and kind and respectful.  She acted EXACTLY like the women who relived their RAPE to me on the phone.  And no one ever came to be with her besides me.

I guess just watching Dr. Ford testify was enough to conjure up these memories.  So much so, that I cannot stop thinking about the juxtaposition of these two events in my life and my recollections and feelings associated with not only those events but my REACTION to those events.

There is a whole "I Believe Her" movement going on today and so do I.  People are saying that it DID happen, just not as she remembers it, specifically relating to the aggressor.

It IS unusual that a perp would exhibit this behavior in adolescence and not adulthood.  Studies support that.  I get it.

But, in my teeny tiny experience as a Rape Crisis Center counselor a billion years ago, she is not only telling the truth but she is risking EVARYTHING that she has accomplished and transcended by drudging up her past. 

During the hearings, at best she seems unstable, but this is just a snapshot on the national stage of who she is and what her life is like. I would think that I would appear emotional and stricken if I had to admit to a sexual assault 30 years ago.

Again, she is risking EVERYTHING.  She may have been an unknowing cog in the political machine, and I am talking Democrats here, but in my experience, she is telling the truth.  And her recollection is accurate.

I just wish I had had the courage to support my young sorority sister when she confided in me, but I didn't.  I was thinking about the publicity and the heartache and the repercussions of standing up for yourself and not the bigger picture.

It IS a big deal, y'all.  A Supreme Court Justice is for life.  Shouldn't he/she be beyond reproach? I don't care if you have affairs.  Maybe you are in an unhappy marriage.  I would LOVE it if you didn't and if you were a family man/woman that kisses babies and nuzzles puppies on the campaign trail and you reveled in every second of it,  yet that is not very realistic, is it?  But the one thing I won't and we shouldn't all tolerate is a sexual predator.  They ruin lives. 

And finally...are there no other candidates?

That is what I thought in the last election.  Have we gotten to the point where it is the lesser of two evils, again?  Only who are the two evils, here, Democrats and Republicans that just confuse the issue to each's own gain?  At the expense of what and who? 

I do not believe that Ford is some means to an end for some political party's gain.  She may be a pawn between the two but it doesn't matter.  The issue and the allegations are real. 

I have been vocal in the past about it being unfair to reach into someone's history and then defining that person by one moment.  This is the exception.  You cannot abuse someone and become a Supreme Court Justice.  You are held to a higher standard and you should be.

If you have gotten away with it in the past, then that's on us.  It has GOT to change now.

Guidance:  Don't watch Fox News.  I had never watched it before last night.  It is pure VITRIOL.  No reporter should have an opinion on it's subject, let alone MOCK it.  It is the reporter's job to RELAY the facts. Point Blank Period.  When did this become a THING for a newscaster to verbally eviscerate a story or specifically it's subject?  I don't know what they are teaching journalism students nowadays, but in ancient times, they just used to squash your creativity, not create media monsters.