English is a strange language, but I wouldn't say especially difficult. Chinese is much harder to learn because it's so inconsistent between what you're supposed to say and the way people actually talk. In addition to using tones that are very unfamiliar and then you also need to learn the written language which is very difficult and requires a Chinese-Chinese dictionary for strange words like manticore and sometimes you can't even find them.

I'd put English at around Russian difficulty, hard, but easy to get going. English also has the advantage of having a simple character set (less letters than Russian, French, etc) and English also has a ton of cultural artefacts (songs, movies, etc) to sink your teeth into.

My problem with Russian (unlike say, French, which I've also studied) is that I can't even find music to listen to that's anywhere close in production value to English and there are a couple of good movies (Leviathan, for example) but you can only watch them so many times. I don't know of a single Russian TV show that is anywhere close to HBO or Netflix quality. I'd love a recommendation though if someone here knows of one.