I find being jewish to be both a great blessing and a horrible curse.
It's wonderful because I have a community, I have people who look and act like me, I have holidays that remind me that we are strong and resilient. I feel more confident in myself as a Jew than I ever did as... whatever I was before that, whatever you could call that.
But it's a double edged sword. We have a history of being villainized and blamed for things we never did, with little to no pushback. People will believe the worst in us because they have no reason to listen to us. Worse, most of it is hidden behind the smokescreen of people expressing their "Anti-Zionism." And if you dare say actually you're just being antisemitic? "No, we're being anti-Zionist. You don't get to tell us what is and isn't antisemitic."
I've been saying "judenhass" a lot more than antisemitism lately. And not just because I have been studying yiddish. Antisemitism as a word was coined to be a more "scientific-sounding" term to replace judenhass, one that people, to this day, use to claim that jews alone don't get to decide what is and isn't antisemitic, even though practically everyone and their grandmother could tell you that to be antisemitic is to be anti-Jew. Judenhass doesn't hide behind the cowardly pretense of "referring to Semitic people in general, not just jews."
You're probably wondering why I'm rambling about all of this. Truth be told, I'm scared. I thought, when I was surrounded by people I considered my friends, that they would protect me from judenhass. I never expected judenhass to sneak into their minds. I'm scared. I don't know what I'll do when I'm in a bigger city. More people will see me and hate me without ever knowing me, knowing my heart or my thoughts. It's scary to be jewish now. Everything has gotten worse since October 7th. I doubt any goy understands just how scared we have been throughout this. How much harassment we get every day for it. And if we dare point it out, we're "just saying everything is antisemitic."
I wonder why so any people are happy to just accept that they know better than jews. I don't like to dwell on it.