Things I am Very Embarrassed About, in No Particular Order
I'm definitely just like Em Rata, right? Right?
A LIST OF THINGS I AM VERY EMBARRASSED ABOUT IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Today, I grabbed my dirty water bottle out of my sink and brought it straight to work like that
I haven’t been to the dentist in at least 5 years, but probably more like 8. I didn’t have dental insurance and then it was the pandemic and now I’m scared so instead I very carefully brush and floss after each meal but listen Emily Ratajkowski was also a known dentist procrastinator1 so I’m telling myself this is what chic, smart people do
Two weeks ago on a date I wasn’t even drunk yet but I was talking about my upcoming trip to South Korea and said I was gonna go to the DMV instead of the DMZ and he made a comment about it
Despite receiving generous emotional support from my friends and putting extensive time and effort and money into the process, I am getting rejected from every grad school I applied to
I washed my water bottle when I got to work but now it tastes like soap
I went out to dinner with my friends for Valentine’s Day and slipped and fell immediately after walking into the restaurant (Paul & Elizabeth’s) and I fell really slowly and quietly and my coat was still on like a fat tumbling marshmallow and when I got up the waitress asked me, “Are you okay? I mean besides embarrassed,” which obviously made it worse
I keep having dreams about hooking up with my ex-boyfriend
I had an interview that included a Japanese skill assessment and I kept accidentally almost switching to Korean
In that same test when I didn’t understand a question and didn’t know how to respond, I said “wakarimashita” (“I understood”) instead of “wakarimasen” (“I don’t understand”)
I realized immediately after the interview was over that I did actually understand the question
This week I hosted an event at work and no students came so it was just me and a bunch of Americorps reps for an hour in a room and they definitely all thought it was my fault
At the gym the other day there weren’t enough mats so I decided to just sit on the ground to stretch while I waited for a mat to open up and then a girl doing a HIIT workout asked me if I actually wanted her mat and I said, “oh sure, thanks!” and I really don’t think I was being that loud but it felt like everyone else on the mats around me was looking at me weird until I finished my workout and I still don’t know why?
At the brewery after run club I was eating a chicken wing but then I dropped it and people saw
At our Super Bowl watch party I asked my friend if she had a dark sense of humor in alignment with mine and frankly I don’t know why I asked because I knew the answer was no and then she grimaced when I told her a genuinely unfunny twitter-humor joke about Travis Kelce ending it all because Taylor would break up with him if the Chiefs lost
Literally just reading an academic book in public while eating a salad
I walked through the cheese section of the co-op because I need to buy more parmesan cheese at a rate that suggests inhuman consumption of parmesan cheese and there were a lot of other people in the area and the charming guy with a cheek piercing who is ALWAYS in the cheese & wine section said, “let me know if I can help you find anything,” so I said, “thanks,” and then immediately realized he probably wasn’t talking to me based on our weird prolonged eye contact
Backchannelled a particularly dysfunctional staff meeting and 24 hours later realized I was sitting close enough to other people that they definitely read me talking shit
Every time that thing happens where I don’t quite lift my foot enough off the ground to take a step and I kind of scuffle across the ground
Same guy from the DMV/DMZ situation spent the night and the next day I said I had extra towels if he wanted to shower and his response was not “thanks” but “do you want to shower?” as if I was the weird person in this scenario
I asked if he wanted coffee and he again asked me almost accusatory if I was really the one who wanted coffee and it turns out he just doesn’t like coffee
I keep just not watering my plants and every night I think I should try to save some of them and then I just don’t water them and now they’re really wilted
I had to break into my own apartment because I thought I locked myself out and at the time creatively removing my chain lock from the outside felt like a MacGyver-level creative problem solve except I never screwed it back on so it’s just dangling from my door
Emily Ratajkowski, “K-Spa,” pp. 101, My Body
Hang in there with grad school. Keep writing