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It has taken me months to read (listen to) Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.�� Not because it isn’t beautiful and insightful and funny and endearing, but because I knew where her story (and ours) would eventually have to go.

And here we are: Michelle’s own still-raw, deeply painful account of the fall of 2016. She writes what so many women felt, especially during the third debate when Trump stalked Hillary Clinton around the stage, standing too close, “trying to diminish her with his physical presence�� in a way that girls and women instinctively feel as a threat - one of the many times he said in words or with his body language, “I can hurt you and get away with it.�� She recalls his belittling of Mexicans and Muslims and POWS and a disabled journalist; his peeling away of American dignity and decency. And then she arrives at that November evening when we learned that Americans - American WOMEN - had chosen him.

Barack and Michelle had invited a friend to watch a movie in the Whitehouse instead of watching the returns. She doesn’t remember anything about the movie. She remembers Barack’s phone pinging, and that he read a text and got a look on his face that Michelle knew meant something bad. “Hm,�� he said. “Something about the Florida returns.�� And a while later, another ping from his phone. He picked it up. Michelle remembers a feeling in the pit of her stomach as if a lead weight had settled there.

You remember that too, right?

While their friend Valerie Jarrett sat with Barack talking about what went wrong, Michelle excused herself to go to bed. “I wanted to avoid knowing this thing for as long as I could.��

And now I have to set the book aside again, for a little while. I feel frozen in a bog of darkness.