I had just finished re-racking my weights when I spotted a familiar t-shirt at the gym. It was plain and white, with a single word plastered across it in bold, black letters: FREEDOM.

Yikes.

This morning, the wearer was a late-middle-aged man. He was tall and bony with deep eye bags and sunken cheeks — not exactly the youthful, boyish target audience the FREEDOM shirts normally catered to.

I paused beside the indoor track to let the man pass by. I gave him the obligatory, existence-acknowledging half-smile, while the chorus of Florence and the Machine’s “Everybody Scream” pumped through my headphones (Here, I don’t have to be quiet / Here, I don’t have to be kind / Extraordinary and normal all at the same time), but he didn’t reciprocate.

Instead, he stared right through me, then marched onward with swinging elbows and his head held high. And when he rounded the track’s curve up ahead, I recognized the familiar logo stitched between his shoulder blades: Charlie Kirk.

Ugh.

A few years ago, the name barely registered. (He’s that podcaster guy who debates college kids, right?) Now, I’m reminded of his existence every time I leave the house. On shirts, on billboards. At bars, at grocery stores, at gas stations — even at the gym at 6:30 in the morning.

Everywhere I go, I'm outnumbered – like I’m the only blue dot on an otherwise very red map. 

And that shit’s exhausting.