My first winter here, and I am negotiating in my second language

I did this for four years at home in a language where I could say exactly what I meant, in the exact register I meant it, and be understood completely. Here I am reduced to about sixty per cent of myself, and the sixty per cent that survives translation is not the useful part.

Twenty seven, the Bronx, eight months in the country. My English is good for work and bad for this, and the gap shows up in a very specific place. I can tell you what I do not want. I cannot yet tell you the small in between things, the thing that is not painful but is becoming unpleasant, and that is exactly where all the important information lives.

So what I need is somebody who will slow down and check, who does not mind repeating a question in different words, and who will not take my long pauses as reluctance. They are grammar.

What I would like is a long partnership. Part of the reason is that with the same person over a year, we would build our own shorthand and none of this would matter any more. I have had that once and it was the best thing about it.

Not looking for anybody who finds my accent charming and says so twice. Not looking for a person who wants to practise their own second language on me. And not looking for anything fast, since fast is where I lose the thread completely.