Ich habe mich selbst gefunden (Und es macht Spaß!)

My office mates have this joke that I’m going to meet a funny German man companion.

I’ve been learning German daily for 2.5 years. I started on January 1, 2023, and I haven’t missed a day since. Sehr engagiert. (Very committed).

I told my work friends that I would eventually go to a German-speaking meetup, so who knows? Perhaps I would truly meet this hypothetical person. But here’s the real truth: I’ve turned out to be a funny German, at least on the night I’m writing this.

And if you could hear my voice — not just read my text — you would know that I am saying this with gratitude, and not primarily as a flex, because I’ve been making meaning of these things, too.

Tonight, I did go to that German-speaking meetup, and I had a blast. I did not meet a funny German man companion my age, and I didn’t really need to look for this. Instead, I drank beer tonight with mostly old men and sat near a woman my age who I would like to hang out with as a friend.

My favorite part (I wasn’t sure how this would go) is that I understood everything. This doesn’t mean that I know every single word. Far from it. But I could follow every part of every conversation. And in my speaking, I made plenty of grammatical mistakes.

I listened a lot because I wanted to take it in, and I was the new kid on the block. But I also said a lot of funny things auf Deutsch tonight. I made people laugh multiple times, and I also said some of my typical group things and stories when they flowed naturally. I felt like the exact same extrovert in English.

I’m proud of that, but more than a flex, I found myself thinking about something Andrea Gibson, poet and activist, wrote. Tragically, Andrea Gibson died from ovarian cancer last week, so they’ve been on my mind, and I recommend reading their work. Andrea Gibson wrote this beautiful poem about how sometimes we need to be “the love of our life.” This is not an invitation for egoistic, self-absorbed love. But it does involve truly loving ourselves and truly loving our lives.

I don’t need a funny German man companion.

I can be my own funny German woman companion. I sincerely enjoy that!

And in all the ways, in community, I hope you, too, can be much of what you’re looking for.

— Renee Roederer