There is a recession for lunch. I am watching the hearing for the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is questioned and forced to relive a horrific experience of being sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh thirty-five years ago. My physiological reaction to watching the hearing mimics that of anticipating a heartbreak. I am nauseous and volatile and wracked with anxiety.

The final decision will undoubtedly have true repercussions which terrifies me to my core because my country has a history of letting these things slide despite feigning a position of understanding and justice-seeking. However it’s the conversations that will happen during and following this hearing that scare me the most. The ones that place me immanently in my woman body, that remind me that I am not a priority, that I am not valued, and that acts and legislation against my body aren’t simultaneously acts against my soul.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have never been sexually assaulted but while I watch Dr. Ford on the stand, visibly uncomfortable and shaky with her words I can’t help but feel like at any point it could have been me. Her testimony doesn’t only hold significance in relation to myself, but I can’t help but go through the directory of cat calls and crossed lines and normalization’s that I and every woman I know obtains within, and imagine myself at that party, on that bed, behind that podium. My heart breaks for her.

I am scared for tomorrow. To open Facebook or read headlines. To talk with the men in my life that I love and to learn where they stand not only with Christine Blasey Ford but also with me. To realize that how my country responds and those I care deeply about react to this matter directly translates to how they feel about me. I refuse to continue to live in the dark believing that our politics are just harmless opinions. As if our votes are not personal attacks on each other.

I am scared for Dr. Ford and I am scared for all American women today. And while I have slowly but surely become silent and consequently complicit following the election of Donald Trump in a form of self-preseveration, it hasn’t protected me from the loneliness and sadness that I feel today. Dr. Ford has reminded me that no matter what is at stake we must fight the good fight.

I believe strongly in self-care and doing what is right for you, but for me, I will not give up because I know I can’t escape the reality that is my country and world and that taking a back seat will not inevitably protect me.

Today I ordered a strawberry milkshake in a diner at an attempt to ground myself, center myself, hug myself and while I was happily and disgustingly slurping the whipped cream off the top I thought about what Dr. Ford was feeling. What Anita Hill was feeling. What all of the “me too” women were feeling. And I made a promise to myself to take part in carrying the burden with them and with every survivor of sexual assault whenever possible, because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

It is never easy to talk about sexual violence, especially when it happens to you. Be reminded that out of every 1,000 rapes, 994 perpetrators walk free, that every 2 out of 3 sexual assaults are never reported and that it’s estimated only 2% of all reports are false and please choose to be on the right side of history. The one of your mothers and sisters and daughters and aunts and loved ones and people you’ve never met and never will and me.