Two years ago today I left for Germany, and what do I have to show for it? Temporarily I accepted myself. Temporarily I filled emptiness with novels about beets and Jesus' sarcophagus. If I was there for any other reason but to learn, my experience would not have been so deep. Never had I felt more alone and more at peace all at once. I had no embarrassment, no shame, but simultaneously no desire to make people interested in me the same way that I became. I reflect on my short hair with envy. I wish I could still feel as confident as I did two years ago. I miss having an experience that was mine and no one else's. I miss me.