Hey. Well, i was the same as you about responding to 1.c4
About 5 yrs ago my old chess coach recommended to me the English Defence. 1.c4 b6 2.d4 e6 to play against 1.c4.
To be honest, at first i found it hard as black accepts in some lines cramped positions, but perfectly ok positions! in fact, black offers the centre to white allowing him 3 pawn centre c4,d4 and e4. Although whites centre looks overpowering black undermines whites centre and can leave his pawns in a mess. Nigel Short has games using this system as black but Tony Miles is the players games you need to study if you take up this opening. It may sound a little boring ie. allowing white to take centre, black suffer space advantage however! blacks bishop on b7(long diagonal) followed by ...f5 and ...Qh4 you can get some pretty wild exciting games (for blitz and serious games) as whites g2 pawn, a8-h1 diagonal and rook h1 can be weak.
I must admit that i have been using this on Fritz/playchess.com and you would not believe the amount of people as white who will take you up on accepting the c4,d4,e4 centre. After some simple pinning (but accurate) and development you can easily find yourself a pawn up after very few moves!
Another advantage of this opening is you dont need to learn theory as such, but rather understand the concepts behind it. Have a look and let me know if it helps
