Inauguration Day

Well, here we are.

As this week has worn on, slowly yet all too quickly moving towards this inevitable day, I’ve found myself feeling more and more agitated and irritable, with the occasional wave of sadness, coming on suddenly and then just as swiftly abating. But mostly I’ve felt angry and exasperated. As I write this, That Man is not even president yet and I’ve already had enough of his incompetent and corrupt administration; and of his ridiculously inept and inappropriate cabinet choices; and of hilarious ‘Grab America By The Pussy’ t-shirts being sold in chain stores; and of countless think pieces imploring me to give That Man a chance, to empathise with those poor, misunderstood souls who voted for him; and of the gobsmacked Trump voters now coming out of the woodwork to announce that – oops – despite all the evidence that he was a lying, sexist, dangerously unqualified shitbag who doesn’t actually care about them, they were fooled into voting for a lying, sexist, dangerously unqualified shitbag who doesn’t actually care about them, and they totally regret it now! But it’s too late. Here we are.

This morning, in an insignificant-yet-still-meaningful-to-me act of personal protest, I decided to change my Facebook profile picture to one of Hillary Clinton. (No. I will not ‘get over it’.) I scrolled through the images on my phone, unable to choose. Then the gut-punch sadness came again, the realisation, the knowing that this could have been our president. Should have been our president. But she never will be. I put my phone down and wiped my eyes. Then I picked it up again and selected a photo. She gazes up and to the left, looking clear-eyed and confident and powerful. An American flag hangs in the background. This is my president.

Tomorrow I’ll go to London to take part in the Women’s March.

What happens after remains uncertain.