A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I'm normally pretty good and forgetting and getting over embarrassing moments. I normally don't really care and laugh it off but for some reason this is different..probably because this is the most embarrassing thing that has happened (or at the very least the second). It was 2 years ago (I know I should be over it by now, right?!). A few months before my 18th birthday i passed my driving test. This spring a conversation up randomly from a guy in my school. I had never spoken to him before yet he seemed to feel the need to speak to me because I had passed my driving test (just like every one else in my year had done throughout the year). Anyway this went on for a few months. He would speak to me every day, eventually asking for my never and we would text to the early hours of the morning. I began to like him quite a bit and my friends got the idea in my head that he liked me too. We would flirt back and forward and I invited him to a party I was having- he said he would come but eventually didn't and blew me off for his friends. That's fair enough..when you're sober. I drunkenly phoned him, told him I was annoyed that he didn't come because he was the one that kept going ok about coming all that week. Embarrasing moment number 1 but although I acted kind of crazy and his friends probably thought/think I'm a pysch, I'm kind of over it.A few weeks later was my 18th birthday party. I had a small garden party with my family and friends. This guy formally invited himself (although I was inviting him anyway). This is where I completely made a fool out of myself. Being of the legal age to drink alcohol now, I went a bit mad. I was mixing drinks and doing shots- doke of straight vodka. The night is very patchy but I can remember the embarassing bits. Not only to I 'make out' with this guy a multiple times in front of my whole family, but I was all over him. Even tried to get him into my bed for the night (talk about desperate!) thankfully that wasn't infront of my family but it was infront of a fair few of my friends. Not only did I embarrass myself by being all over the guy and quite possible ruining his night, I had to take it even further when he told friends that he didn't like me in that way but would have broke his heart to tell me so just lead me on. When I found this out, being as drunk as I was I started crying!! By the end of the night I was crying drunk sitting on my older cousins knee explaining how much i liked him and how he just lead me on. I was and still am mortified. It was safe to say that after that he didn't message me anymore but because e was friends with some people from my group of friends now, I saw him around at parties and what not. We still speak when we see each other and he is a nice guy but every time I hear his name or see him, that night just comes floading back to me and I get embarrassed all over again. We were really good friends until it happened so I regret ruining a potentially good friendship. I got him within a week or so, especially since my boyfriend came to the rescue and made me feel better. I got together with my current boyfriend a month after it all happened. Every one to the this day still claims my boyfriend was a rebound but he wasn't. I was 100% over the guy within days but I still feel a bit embarrassed for getting with my boyfriend so soon.Anyway, it's been 2 years and I know I should be over it by now but I really struggle. Like I say whenever i see him or his face (and it doesn't help that he's my boyfriends friend either!) the memory just comes flooding back. Sometimes it pops into my head randomly or when my people talk about my 18th party- they don't even have to mention what I did. How can I move on from this? I've really tried but it's starting to get my down now that I can't seem to move on and I feel bad about myself for being such an idiot! Help!
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female
reader, lossing  +, writes (2 September 2014):
I haven't ever done anything like this in my life but I've done other things in my life that has embarrassed me to know end. Sometimes I use to wake up in the middle of the night I would cringe at the thought. All I can tell you chalk one up to experience and stop drinking. Unfortunately when we have lemons we need to make lemonade. This isn't going to be the last time you will make a mistake but it can be the last one you make drinking.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (1 September 2014): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionYou've all made me feel so much better and for the first time I've actually had a little laugh at it all! It will probably take time but with your kind words I think I'll be able to move on from it all and stop cringing so much, even, hopefully, finding it amusing every time if comes to mind. :)
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A
female
reader, CindyCares  +, writes (30 August 2014):
 No no, OP, don't take it this way .
Look, tbh I am never too tender with people making a spectacle of themselves ( ..maybe because they have this tendency to flock to my doorsteps, as explained before :)- but, : you got very drunk. ONCE ! At your 18th birrhday !..
It's not that terrible , really. Your friends may not have done the same because they do not drink, but I am pretty sure that thay too will have said or done something stupid and foolish and embarassing themselves- particularly if matters of the heart were involved. If they didn't , they will, sooner or later - mark my words.
AS for your parents, no you haven't embarassed them , or at least embarassment wasn't their main emotion.
I don't know what their reaction was AFTER the incident... maybe they scolded you, they gave you a stern lecture.... maybe they teased you, they laughed it off...
but do you want to know what they were feeling at the time ?.... They felt your pain. As " ridicolous " as it was. They ( particularly your mom ) had their heart gripped in a fist and thought " Oh no . My child. My baby. This is her 18th birthday, and it should be a happy ,memorable day, amd she should be having the time of her life... and she is there CRYING and feeling miserable. I wish I could be in HER place now, I wish I could take all this on me ".
So don't worry about your parents . They understood.
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A
female
reader, Honeypie +, writes (29 August 2014):
 Awww OP, I feel your pain.
But IF you learned from this episode, then you now KNOW better. We find lessons all the way through life, in little and big things we either see, do or hear about.
This was a lesson for you. You made a mistake of being just a little crazy.
At some point in time you need to learn to look back and not cringe, but laugh. It will happen.
I had the BIGGEST crush on a co-worker when I was working abroad. We got on like white on rice, bark on a tree. At work and out of work. What I didn't know was that he was gay. I was honestly "lucky" that someone told me before I confessed my feelings. VERY lucky, that could have been MAJORLY embarrassing. But even if I didn't PUBLICLY embarrass myself, I did for quite a while feel a sense of "shame" - I mean I should HAVE KNOWN he was gay and not interested in me, I grew up with a gay best friend and many many male friends and never had things crossed the line. The thing is... GORGEOUS GRAHAM (that's the guy) hid that side of him well, he actually used ME as a cover, because he didn't WANT everyone to think he was gay.
Now I got over my embarrassment and I actually told him a couple of years later and we laughed about it. He is married to a great guy and I'm nicknamed "The Wife". (we are btw some 25+ years later still friends)
Now I could probably write quite a few more examples of *WTF was I thinking?!!* moments of my life, but I think you get the gist.
If you don't make some mistakes in your life, you haven't lived.
And learn to NOT waste time REGRETTING these mistakes. LEARN from them and MOVE on.
So stop fretting. If your family poke fun at you over this, tell them, yea I was so lame back then, but can we PLEASE let it go, I'm SO OVER that episode?!
It will be OK :)
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A
female
reader, CindyCares +, writes (29 August 2014):
Ah don't think about it one more minute.
Typical. Generational thing. Rite of passage. Drink fueled , or drink assisted , emotional melt down. Everybody has one or more. Also, probably very Anglo thing.
( I know, it sounds strange said by a Southern European. Latins are supposedly very emotional, very demonstrative. They are, in a way- but not in THIS way . But maybe it is just that. They do not keep their feelings all bottled up, if they are sad,mad or upset, you'll know it right away . So there's no huge build up of overwhelming emotions that need to erupt like lava at once , with the help of a little vodka ).
The first time, I was shocked.
I was in NY since just a couple of days and I saw a young girl at a phone booth ( yeah, way back then- there where cells around, but not that many , and people actually still used phone booths ). She was bawling her eyes out, and yelling into the phone " And you call yourself a man ? What kind of a man you are ?, when you know that your girlfriend is here , alone in the street, cryng, blah blah "...
Big big drama ( or so I assumed ). I wanted to go over and help. Call her mom. Call the police. Call somebody. Then
I did not have the nerve, I just chickened out and left it at that- but feeling guilty after. No need for guilt, as I discovered in the years to come.
If I had a dollar for each and any lovelorn , semi-drunk ( or VERY drunk ) girl making a big noisy scene on a night out, I could buy myself a whole designer wardrobe.
Now I live in an area that is full with college students - both locals and ( mostly )foreigners . Basically, nearly every Saturday night, coming home from the movies or a restaurant, I find one ( two, in general , one cries and the other does the comforting ) sitting on the steps at the entrance of my building, sobbing and howling . I ask a quick " Everything OK ? You allright ? " - just to make sure that they haven't been raped or injured ( never happened so far, luckily ) and I leave them to their freakouts. It does not even feels like Saturday night when it does not happen ! :).
Like I said, rite of passage. Like stealing your mom's cigarettes when you are 13 , smoking them all behind a bush and then getting horrbly sick all over the place ?...
No sentimental education is complete without an episode like yours. It's like a hurdle you have to go through on your path to womanhood :). I bet that now you have become better at handling both your emotions- and your liqueurs.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (29 August 2014): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you all for your responses. I'm the embarrassing one of my friends, who always messes up. My friends are pretty squeaky clean compared to me and although they don't make a big deal out of what happened, I have nothing to compare myself to I terms of embarrassing moments. Mine are always the worst and even though, like I said, I'm normally pretty good and laughing these off and moving on from them, this one for some reason just sticks and haunts me and makes me feel worse every time I think about it..it's a memory I've began to obsess over and I know it's not healthy! I think it's because it's the worst I've ever behaved. I never thought I'd behave the way I did and the fact I did it at a party where all my family was is the most mortifying part of all!
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A
male
reader, macloverdoc  +, writes (29 August 2014):
 hey it may sound simple but true. we all do mistakes right? there is nothing to change it I mean we all wish if there was a time machine. I think accept the thing you've done. You regret it ,be ashamed,feel terrible and let it be your guide to be your self perfectness. You'll never do the same mistake,you'll never act before rethinking. we all learn the most from biggest mistakes. I would tell my story it is kind of long but my 2.5 long relation ship ended in brutal way which was the hardest thing I went through. I can't sleep somedays when I remember. I kinda started to love it cuz it makes me work out harder,take good care of myself harder,makes me study to be a better person,guy,doctor,lover. isn't it all life about? improving yourself? so what you've done huge mistake! we all human beings. we do mistakes and we will. that doesn't tell lets go jump off roof and learn from it :D accept it! confront it. let it be! All is well :)) I hoped it boosted your energy,changed your mood! ps:when we feel down our brain collects and brings all sad memory to make you more sad. when you are happy it is harder to recall of something bad. So try to decide when you are in good mood!
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reader, anonymous, writes (29 August 2014): It was a lesson well learned and you may always remember; but the emotional impact will fade with time. It happened on a birthday; so it's going to stick for awhile.
You were still a kid and just turning 18. You are now a young woman and realize even more now, than back then; how foolish the behavior was. You have to learn to laugh at things we did back in those days; because we didn't know what we know now. Eventually you will.
You are a very conscientious person. Obviously you're more mature and dignified now; but that incident is all water under the bridge. It will comeback to haunt you, but you can't hold too much anxiety over it. You were just a kid and you had too much alcohol!
Here's my advice. Use that only as a lesson; not mental torment. If you can find one person with a sound mind and has reached the age of 20; that can't look back on their most embarrassing moment? They were either in a coma, or have a case of amnesia. Two years really isn't that long.
Give yourself a break.
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A
female
reader, PrincessRiches +, writes (29 August 2014):
 You are not the first, and certainly won't be the last person to make a complete twat of yourself when being drunk. What happened you at your 18th happens me most weekends! Lol. He wasn't that good of a friend or he would have just laughed at your behaviour, probably teased you about it nonstop, but if he ever cared about you, he wouldn't have ditched you as a friend. Its been two years, its time to put it down as a learned lesson and move on. Even though you don't think it, people probably can't remember it that well. A girl in my year had to get her stomach pumped the night of my 18th and an ambulance had to come,, it was the talk of the school at the time, but do you know what? When I brought it up in converstation not that long ago, my friends only vaguely remembered it! They were just like, oh yeah, that. People stop caring, trust me. And don't worry about that guy, forget those who forget you.
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