I remember scuba diving many years ago.  It was late in the afternoon.  My air tank was low.  We hit a patch of dark, murky water.  I don’t now when it started, but I rapidly lost all visual sense of where I was.  I felt like everything was closing in.  My heart started racing.  I began breathing so hard that I felt like I was choking.  I couldn’t tell up from down.  I wanted to surface but I wasn’t sure which way the surface was.

This past year reminded me of that sensation.  Losing touch with the feeling of normal.  We elevated the misogynist over a supremely capable female hand.  I have no desire to list everything this man has said and done against women.  My stomach starts to hurt just thinking about it.  There is no reaction left in me.  Only determination to show how I feel.  To let our voices rise over the obnoxious early morning tweets.

We march tomorrow.  The reasons are self-evident.  We are not doing this from our bubble. There is no case to be made for marching against everything this man stands for.  We’ve spent enough time documenting every despicable tweet and every attack on normal citizens from the comfort of his powerful, cowardly perch.

He craves our attention, only when it’s to massage his insecure, easily wounded ego.  There is no pivot.  There never was going to be one.  Donald Trump will remain Donald Trump.  He’s made his message very loudly and very clearly.  He lined his Cabinet with Goldman Sach’s executives and rich partisans who want to dismantle the institutions they have been assigned to lead.

We should have marched long ago.  Now we march out of disbelief that this is happening.  We are swimming in murky water, losing orientation.  Not knowing up from down.  Trump is losing us in his new normal but we can never accept that.

After my panic subsided, I began to look around me.  The water was still murky.  I still felt lost.  Then I saw the bubbles leaving my regulator.  They gently flowed in the direction I needed to go.

A march is like a stream of bubbles, awakening us out of our panic.  Reminding us to find our center.  To move in the direction of life before it is too late.  When I found the waters edge I burst upward, pulled the regulator from my mouth, and breathed fresh air again.  The breathe of life.  So taken for granted until you realize you needed it more than anything.

The time for panic and reaction is over.  Now we march to protect our sense of respect and dignity.  We march for women, but more importantly we march because this is our country and even Presidents need to reminded from whom they exist to serve.