It’s only been a few weeks since the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump and Billy Bush flooded our Facebook feeds and news reports, and already I feel behind the times by waiting until now to write this post. Still, this was never really about the election or Trump specifically, but more to the reaction to the controversy. More specifically, it’s in response to the reaction of people, some of whom I know and respect, to the women who spoke out against him in the weeks following the tape’s release: why didn’t they speak up earlier?

I can’t answer for those women. I can’t say whether or not Trump did or did not do anything. I also can’t say whether or not the women in question are telling the truth. I can’t even really answer the why, but there is one thing I can say with complete authority. It is entirely possible that a woman would stay silent for decades after having been kissed without permission, having had a man grope their breasts or reach up their skirts without invitation, or having endured any number of other unsolicited physical invasions that stop short of rape. I know because it happened to me.

When I was an eighteen-year-old freshman in college, I fell asleep (platonically) in my friend’s roommate’s bed next to a male friend of ours. He was barely nineteen, and as with most teenagers was enjoying his new freedom by pushing boundaries. Instead of drugs or drinking, his main focus seemed to be the female sex. He was a physically demonstrative person, but the attention he paid was rarely affectionate. Rather, it was almost clinical. He used to brag about how he was studying women, seeing how far he could push their boundaries.

On the morning I woke up in bed next to him, he decided to push my boundaries. I was wakened by the unfamiliar feeling of a man’s hand down my pants. My reaction was mild. I simply pushed his hand away and rolled over. I didn’t leave the bed. I didn’t yell or scream or even slap his hand away. I rolled over.

I did tell my friends, although none of us ever really did anything about it. We continued to include him in our group. One of my friends even continued a consensual mild physical relationship with him. The only one of us who ever had even close to an extreme reaction was Chris, who would eventually become my husband. He continued to harbor anger until he was literally on his deathbed and made me tear up a picture of the man in question.

Chris was right. This “friend” may have been barely a man, but he knew what he was doing, and he committed an invasion of my body that has never really left me. I’m lucky that it’s basically the only thing like it that’s happened to me. Most women aren’t so lucky. But that incident happened in 2001, a whole fifteen years ago. I’ve long since stopped hanging out with him, but I never reported it. I never did anything about it.

The reason I can’t answer why the women who are accusing Trump of various indecent acts is because I can’t even say why I never did anything more than roll over. I never went to anyone in authority. I never even spoke to him. In time, I had myself half convinced I was dreaming and that it didn’t really happen the way I remember, even though I know it happened exactly as I remember. He was interested in seeing how far he could push me, and he found my boundaries without consequence.

So, if it took me fifteen years to speak out, without even being comfortable naming his name, imagine how it might feel to have such a thing happen by a powerful, influential, wealthy man with dozens of lawyers at his beck and call. If I’m still working through the feelings that make it difficult to admit to myself, let alone the world, that what happened that morning was assault, imagine how it must feel to face those feelings when speaking up would make you a household name. I can’t tell you why. I can’t say whether or not the women are telling the truth. But I can say that it is perfectly comprehensible that if something happened to them years ago, it could take a public denial from the man in question to pull them out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Writing is usually easy for me. Most of the blog posts I’ve written have been typed in one sitting with minimal revision. I used to write school papers the night before they were due and get A grades without much difficulty. It’s usually relaxing – a source of calm rather than stress. In writing this post, however, my heart has been pounding, anxiety rising. It’s been bouncing around in my head for weeks, and it needed to come out, but it’s not a comfortable thing to sent out into the world. It isn’t going to be as clean as it could be, and I’m not going to send it to anyone to help me revise it. It will go out, warts and all, because this isn’t a comfortable or smooth thing for me to write so it’s maybe okay that it not be smooth or comfortable to read.

I know I’m opening myself up to criticism by writing this. I hope that the people reading this blog are kind and accepting, but know that the Internet is generally the opposite. I also know that the person in question may very well read this, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind about the election, but hope that maybe someone will read this and realize that nothing is ever quite as simple as it appears, and that sometimes it takes years for something to come to light – and that may not make it untrue.