No One Saw That Right?

Embarrassment.  It happens to the best of us.  And to the worst of us it happens all the time.  That would be me.  My face turns and alarming shade of crimson and I tend to reach for the nearest thing to hide behind.  It's been like this for most of my my life.  I have always been clumsy and haven't always had the filter of "think before you speak", leading to many a red-faced experience in my youth.  

A tradition gloriously carried on into my adulthood.

Besides the normal, tripping over my own feet, running into walls. and general lack of a hand-to-eye coordination, I am also socially embarrassing.  I run without a filter 75% of the time, making my friends' lives exceedingly amusing.  I spout off whatever I am thinking about and usually it's not a complete thought thus adding to the idiocy of it all.

Now see, to my friends, this is funny.  To my family, it is a constant source of critisism.  To everyone else, I'm just a train wreck they stare at.  I suspect that's why some people keep me around, just to see what stupid thing I will do next.  And they are in for a treat.  It's never very long between my little episodes.

Some days are worse then others, some days I can just laugh off my clumsiness and be thankful only one person bared witness to me tripping over my own feet walking down the hall.  Other days require me to hide under my covers like a five year old.  I've had a lot of those days in the past few months.  It makes me very happy that I was surrounded by people who would help me laugh it off, all though some still like to gloat.  People who don't mind when I make a complete fool of myself and have to hide behind a pillow for a few minutes

But there is something I don't understand, why is it, when I get embarrasses, I feel the need to hide?

I know I am not the only one.  It's very common, just pay a little kid a compliment and watch them hid behind their mother's leg.  Watch the reaction of a girlfriend, at a baseball game, when her boyfriend proposes. It's a natural reaction to the emotion.  But why?

You hide yourself away when you feel ashamed.  Am I ashamed when I get embarrassed?  I don't think I am.  I even have the tendency of telling people the clumsy things I do, cause it makes them laugh.  But yet the smallest compliment paid to me will make me wish I could disappear.

Oh how I wish I could disappear sometimes.  Just be invisible, wander through my life without fear of embarrassment.  But I can't do that.  I can't live like that.  That wouldn't be living.  There would be so many things that I would have missed out on if I hadn't embarrassed myself.  SO many things.

So I guess I will have to learn how to deal with my embarrassment, and come to terms with the fact that it will happen again.  I will make a fool of myself and I will feel the familiar burning in my ears and cheeks as I turn bright red.  Sometimes those embarrassments will haunt me for years to come, other times they will be some of the best things I have ever done.  I won't know right away, I'll have to sit and hide, and wait to see what happens next.