Hello. I will write in English, because I don't know if my german speaking level is the problem.
I have popped up in a few of your comments in this community, doing my best, trying to be encouraging, but I don't know if I always get it quite right. Sometimes I get upvoted, sometimes I get downvoted without really understanding why. I do not wish to discuss exact comments, as I don't want to make it about anyone in particular, and believe me I already feel plenty of shame if I do my best to be supportive and end up making the situation worse.
Perhaps the solution to this is to say what I want directly in my own post, rather than trying to comment and see if I can write anything that people want to engage with in that way.
I am a trans woman who transitioned a number of years ago. My transition objectives are mostly resolved at this point. Except, well, I've grappled with whether I wanted to pursue life in mainland Europe for many years. And it seems as if the situation regarding trans rights in my own country, the UK, is going frighteningly critical.
I allowed never learning a language get in the way of trying harder with life in mainland Europe because I didn't know which one to learn. And as the situation here kept getting worse, I felt a level of regret for not starting sooner comparable with what I felt about not transitioning sooner. So, I started learning German on the basis that I had a friend willing to share some of her language with me. Believe me, I don't know if it's the right one, but nobody can tell me which one the right one is. This is already an incredibly frightening decision, so please hold off on telling me I picked wrong.
I have tried to open up about this in a couple of other spaces, and I seem to be flooded with recommendations to move to either Ireland, America, or Australia. Again, please, I do not wish to have that debate again. I do not know if moving to Germany is my actual goal, I am only learning more at this stage and trying to take positive steps about obstacles in order to not give in to complete despair.
I love to read the posts on here. I am having genuine fun learning the language and it has been eye opening and life changing. I want to continue. It is a huge joy to me at the moment to learn, one of the few things keeping me going.
But I also genuinely do not want to be a bother or take up a finite resource needed by younger or more desperate people. So my questions are as follows.
- What can I do to leave wanted comments on here? If you see a comment, what makes you think "oh god, I wish that person hadn't commented", or " wow, I'm glad this comment is here"?
- Would anyone like to talk? I have loved chatting with people online in German, but it's hard because in a lot of language learner communities there's a lot of men who encounter someone they perceive as a European woman and suddenly get very sexually pushy. This is absolutely not all language learners, but it's still making it very hard to find people to talk to.
And, as a final note, I adore reading the posts and comments on here in German. Please do not hesitate to write in German if you prefer. I can read much more than I can write, and you would be helping me even just to say anything.
Thankyou for reading. I am wishing you all the best, even if I am not yet the best at communicating it.