“Oh, you’re a republican? Must be because of your parents. Don’t you have a brain of your own? Why would you even be a part of that party, don’t they all support Trump? How can you be so narrow-minded?”

It’s never been easy to live in an incredibly liberal state and have a completely different viewpoint than everyone around me. As I was growing up I heard countless dinner conversations and news channels talking about this word: politics. My parents were both involved, as was my grandfather, my uncle, and I’m sure a few more relatives somewhere. Anytime my parents were going off to a meeting, there was a fair chance it had something to do with politics.

In elementary and middle school, this didn’t affect me, of course. I was too busy getting my fake fingernails stuck to my second grade desk to spend time focusing on who was running for what. Middle school came around and I started to hear and comprehend more of what was going on around me in the realm and I started creating my own opinions on matters. I wasn’t having deep intellectual conversations with my friends about issues—I was focused on getting straight A’s in all of my classes.

There was never a set of points that I was forced to agree with during these conversations, it was just that—a conversation.

Then I started high school. Two of the middle schools in my district fed into one high school and we had another set of people to deal with. This meant plenty of new opinions to weigh in on every issue that plagued our nation, especially with such astute young minds gathering for six-odd hours of every day. Plenty of time was spent doing classwork and the like, but as time went on I saw that more often than not, I was called out in class for being a known Republican.

As most of my class associated with the Democratic Party, I was the only one with an opposing viewpoint that they all took advantage of. If there was ever a debate you could bet that I was the lone ranger supporting my opinions to the vociferous cries of my classmates bashing my views (but never offering true support of their own). Whenever an argument arose, I would think about my position before immersing myself in the conversation because it’s important to have factual support of any claim that you substantiate. This was not always the case for my classmates, and in the occasion that I didn’t have evidence I would bow out of the conversation. Somehow this still made me the bad person.

In college, I learned that I couldn’t speak my own opinion without being given dirty looks and angry Facebook responses on statuses, so I only argued when I had facts. You see, the people I’ve encountered always seem to attack on a personal level, and never with actual support of anything they say. It’s funny how that works—even if you don’t have facts, you can still attack someone and get more “likes” on a post than someone who has factual information.

So, I became the well-known republican. I didn’t always argue, but when I did there was factual evidence to support my claims. But the real problem is that when you grow up in a place so saturated with one viewpoint, there is no argument. There is only one voice heard. That voice attempted to silence mine. Unfortunately, it never will.