My most embarrassing moments
And why I'm letting them go
Embarrassment has played a huge role in my life. I was an extremely shy, socially anxious kid. I was happy at home but felt embarrassed all the time at school. In adulthood, I became more confident and even extroverted. But my humiliations, some of them decades-old, have stuck around. Many nights, I close my eyes to sleep and they flash before my consciousness like a terrible movie.
A couple weeks ago while falling asleep, I caught myself ruminating for the millionth time. I paused the movie midway through. I’m thirty-five years old, I thought. Enough is enough! I’ve decided I refuse to care about these ancient embarrassments any more. So now, today, I want to speak them aloud and release them. I hope by allowing them space to exist outside my head they’ll take up less space inside it.
Here are all my most haunting humiliations, in no particular order.
7th grade. An acquaintance pulls me aside and tells me “people say you eat your hair.” (I didn’t eat my hair. I had trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder that sometimes has an oral component. I didn’t know trich existed, I just thought I’m a freak.)
2016. I was a columnist at a popular alternative blog in New York. Influenced by the Gilmore Girls episode where Rory gutsily demands a job and gets it, I set a meeting with the editor and said “you should make me your art director!” and he was just like: no?
Later, I told the same blog that they owed me a bunch of money. They did the math and were like, “we don’t owe you money, actually.” Turns out I’d done my math wrong. They’d been so good to me. I felt like such an asshole.
1st grade. Walking into class late, red and puffy faced, everyone staring at me. I had been sobbing in the car, holding onto the door handle, begging my mom not to make me go to school, but she made me go anyway.
High school. A friend of mine poked fun at my hair-pulling. I was so embarrassed to realize she saw that I pulled out my hair. (In order to stay sane, I convinced myself nobody could see me pulling. I still thought I was a freak. I didn’t learn what trichotillomania was until college.)
Sometime in early childhood. I suggested to my cousin we play a game where we just stare at each other, because I secretly thought he was cute. He said no.
2015 or so. I was at a cafe and didn’t realize I was pulling out my hair. The owner of the cafe brought me a piece of paper to place the hairs I’d pulled on. I was super embarrassed and defensively angry. I left immediately. (Trichotillomania is related to OCD, is often compulsive and unconscious, and has no cure. I’ve had long periods without pulling but this wasn’t one of them.)
5th grade. A friend told me “you weigh as much as my mom,” among other shitty comments about my body.
That same friend’s little brother called me fat.
2016. I had dinner plans with an artist I looked up to and wanted to be friends with. Jack and I were newly dating. When I was leaving his house to meet her for dinner, he invited himself along. He was my first boyfriend and I had no idea how to say “no” to something like that. So he came along. I felt so embarrassed to have brought my boyfriend, unannounced. He is now equally embarrassed by this story.
4th grade. Peed my overalls at school.
2016. A guy I was in the middle of hooking up with told me, “you always seemed asexual to me.”
This one’s long: I did live-drawing on stage during an event at Radio City Music Hall in 2015 or so. It felt glamorous and went really well. Afterwards, a friend asked what I’d been paid and I said “nothing,” and suddenly thought, wait, why wasn’t I paid? For years I felt so embarrassed by that. As I got taken advantage of many more times as an artist, I developed a chip on my shoulder. For some reason, I looked back on that event as the most significant violation, even though at the time I’d agreed to do it for free. In an attempt to ‘rectify’ it, I sent the event organizer an invoice and told her I needed to be paid for what I’d done. I subtweeted her on twitter, too. She was upset and offended and explained that they didn’t have the budget and only one person who performed that night had been paid. I thought I was being a badass, seeking justice, sticking up for myself, but I was just being a dick. I ended up apologizing.
8th grade. Got my period through my shorts on a school field trip to Six Flags.
2019. I forgot to invite a friend to my wedding. But I did invite someone I’d met through her, who I knew less well. By the time I realized, it was too late, and I've felt like shit about it ever since.
2022. Our dog was being really cute sitting on our bed, and I quickly snapped a pic and sent it to my group chat. If I’d examined the photo more closely before sending, I would’ve noticed that my husband was standing in the doorway in the background, donald-duck style, wearing just a shirt and nothing else. So, yeah. I sent a dick pic to my group chat. I begged my friends to delete the photo and they did but roasted me heavily, as was their right.
Junior year of high school. A guy flapped my leg fat on the bus. I hissed at his stick-thin girlfriend, control your man!
In college: I asked a guy for his number and he said no.
Middle school through high school: Every. Single. School. Dance.
2021. Spoke repeatedly about how stinky my belly button was in front of a brand new friend.
Thank you for taking these off my hands. I hope I shall never think of them before I fall asleep again.
❤️ Hal
Order my latest book with my mom, What To Do When You Get Dumped.
love this exorcism
I just wanted to say THANK YOU. We all have moments like these that play through our heads in quiet moments, but still somehow manage to convince ourselves that we’re the only ones. This helped me to remember it’s not just me.