Accidental surface: to feel comfortable with embarrassment

A few weeks ago, I submitted a poem for a workshop around 10 pm, I reviewed it, I perfected it, I read it out loud for myself and my friends -I was ready to obey. This was a pretty busy week for me: various responsibilities for The News-EletterTerms of creepy philosophy, an increasing pile of history readings. So, when I sent an E -mail to my poetry to my whole class, I did not examine it. I sent it. Then I returned to my readings, I called my friends and I went to sleep. Everything was fine. My poetry was okay and I sent it to 23:59 PM

Unknown to me, however, I, with that click of a “send” perspective, I ended up sending four pages of projects on this poem with all my personal thoughts on the subject: my former lover. I haven’t been well known about this for some time. But when the workshop rolled for about two weeks later, I realized my mistake. I am sure you can imagine my horror when my teacher asked if I intend to send all four pages or if it was just the first page I hoped to workshop.

I didn’t send four pages, I said.

Yes, you did it, my classmate confirmed.

Oh.

Now, the best way to recover from this is to admit that what has been done is done and to realize that my classmates do not know me very well and I probably forgot about this anomal workshop a few hours later. However, I don’t. And this draws attention to a part of me that is particularly sensitive to embarrassment, especially to unwanted personal revelation.

I wrote about it before, although from a different perspective. I mentioned My struggles with sharingbut in the abstract – a kind of vague discomfort with vulnerability. I have never talked about what I think would happen if I share my emotions, my thoughts about people, my memories of my ex-boyfriend. My concrete wall is insurmountable, fortified and untouched, because I am worried that if someone would cross it, they would find something radically embarrassing.

Well, despite this fact, in my absent fatigue mind, I cut a whole door through that one -click wall of an excessive hand, inviting a flood of potential humiliation.

If you really think about it, it’s not a big deal. Sending internal thoughts about a former lover in my poem class is embarrassing, yes, but more fun than harmful. Despite my increased jena at that time, I will forget about it, just like my classmates, who have probably forgotten (hopefully) so far. But maybe, possibly, it is a good thing – especially for me.

I am someone who strives to share their personal thoughts. So, perhaps the best thing for me is to have those thoughts accidentally revealed to a group of people I don’t really know. Not because the results of this specific event will be ideal – my classmates now know all my personal thoughts about relationships and my strange way of finding ideas for my poems. But it will be useful because he has taught me and will continue to teach me, that sharing is not so bad and that when it happens – although unintentional – it is not so important. Eventually he is forgotten. In simple words: it is not so deep. And every day passing when and forget about it, concerned instead with all the pressing things that do It matters, I realize that the sharing may not be so bad in the end. If I can reveal my personal thoughts about my ex -boyfriend who presents the strange and often embarrassing interior works of my writer activities and if I can write about this experience without reliving it and agonizing it, then the sharing is not so great.

There are so many things that put these minor moments of temporary humiliation in perspective. I learn to realize that this small and insignificant unwanted sharing is, although at the moment, so minor an experience to agonize. That is something to laugh and forget, and most importantly, that sharing may not be so frightening.

Lana Swindle is a Sophomore from Princeton, NJ, specialized in writing seminars. She is a news editor and features for The News-Eletter. Her column looks at her daily experiences from a different perspective.