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“My guest is Christine Blasey Ford,” said NPR’s Terry Gross on her March 19 “Fresh Air” show. “She testified at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing that he sexually assaulted her.” Blasey Ford has a new book, One Way Back, and in the lengthy interview the author explains:

I did retraumatize myself, having to go back through everything and relive it. And I tried to write a book a couple of years after the testimony and just really wasn’t able to engage in the material. And when I looked at what I had written, I didn’t think it was something that would be very useful anyway. So I abandoned that project for a while and then took it back up once I felt a lot better five years later.

I expected a little bit of pushback in the hearing. And the hearing itself wasn’t particularly difficult. I mean, it was the difficulty that I expected it to be. Some of the questions towards the end started to get sort of off topic and confusing, but, other than that, I actually left the room feeling like I did a good enough job and I would be OK, and I would go back to California, and we would figure out our hotel life and move forward.

And the main thing is I just didn’t want to be on TV. That was my biggest fear at the time – was I don’t want to be – I was picturing the 1991 hearing and thinking, there’s just no way I could…

Well, I guess the main regret is that I didn’t know that that was the only time I would ever speak to them. I thought, well, of course they’re going to have follow-up questions and want to know more details and maybe look at the therapy records or talk to the friends or talk to people. I just didn’t think that was, you know, the only opportunity to speak.

I was definitely grieving – not over the outcome. The outcome is something I had to detach from before I even testified, that the outcome is going to be whatever it is. But the process was so difficult, especially with the DARVO [Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim Offender] and the smear attacks. I had a really difficult time with the social media comments and the memes and all of that. It was very hard to get through.

And so on, in classic style. Based on Blasey Ford’s testimony in 2018, people have a right to wonder what her 911 call might have been like.