I\u2019m So Embarrassed<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 14, about to audition for a scholarship at the American\u00a0School of Ballet. My mother and I had gotten up early and driven to Manhattan
from Massachusetts. There was more traffic than we expected and I\u2019m nearly late\u00a0as I rush into the dressing room to change into my leotard and tights. I walk quickly\u00a0over to the studio and open the door. It closes behind me and I\u2019m standing at the top of a stairway. I look down and see\u00a0that the room is filled with dancers. My shoulders are raised up to my chin and\u00a0my fingers are clenched as I fiddle with the waistband of my tights Although\u00a0it isn’t her fault, I\u2019m angry at my mother for making us late, ruining my\u00a0chances of slipping into the studio early so I can be invisible and get a good spot\u00a0in the room. Now I have to walk down the stairs in full view of close to forty
students and figure out how to eke out a place for myself at the crowded ballet\u00a0barre.<\/p>\n
I look straight ahead, trying to seem casual and\u00a0confident. I take the first step off the landing, lose my footing and slide\u00a0forward, falling loudly, step by step, down the flight of five stairs. Everyone\u00a0stops fidgeting, pulling, bending, and stretching for a brief moment and stare\u00a0at me until I land at the bottom. I\u2019ve made my entrance into this competitive\u00a0world not neatly, quietly, and inconspicuously like I had planned, but rather\u00a0with a roar and a bang, a red face and a wounded body. When I get up and try to\u00a0find a place at the barre, no one wants to make room for me. I push someone forward,\u00a0she glares at me and she lets me in.<\/p>\n
Embarrassing is too mild of a word for what I\u00a0felt, but we all have our fair share of humiliating moments. I once went to a\u00a0poetry circle where sixteen of us read our poetry aloud and offered what we
thought were supportive comments \u2013 except for one woman who tore everyone down.\u00a0After each reading, she said something cruel and demeaning. I don’t know why\u00a0the facilitator allowed it. Maybe she was preparing us for the inevitable\u00a0rejections that every writer has to endure.<\/p>\n
When it was my turn, I read my poem in a and\u00a0looked up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like a Hallmark card,\u201d Miss Shamer
commented.<\/p>\n
I winced, it hurt, and I joined the other poets\u00a0who couldn’t wait to give her back what she was slinging out. We continued\u00a0around the circle, she continued to upset everyone and when it was her turn,
she got up and left.<\/p>\n
These cruel criticisms leave their marks in our\u00a0subconscious. Kids bully other kids until they get so broken down, they hide in\u00a0the schoolyard, shamed, scared and unwilling to tell an adult how they\u2019re being\u00a0treated. A lot of us have PTSD from this kind of treatment at some time in our\u00a0lives. Nothing evokes fear and paralysis like someone telling you you’re not good\u00a0enough or you’re doing something wrong. But the way you choose to live and\u00a0express yourself cannot be measured by what someone else thinks about you.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re authentic on the page, other people\u00a0will relate. When I was writing my book, \u201cMemoirs of a Ghost,\u201d I had a serious talk\u00a0with myself. Was I willing to be vulnerable and write what really happened to\u00a0me in my life? Or did I want to hold back and hide the feelings that\u00a0embarrassed me? I decided to go for it and put it all out there.<\/p>\n
When my book was published, a friend invited me\u00a0to her book club so the women could ask me questions. I answered what they\u00a0wanted to know and a woman raised her hand. \u201cHow did you find the courage to\u00a0tell the truth about that awful love affair?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figured if it happened to me,\u201d I said, \u201cit\u00a0happened to a lot of other people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every woman in the room looked down, probably\u00a0remembering something deeply hurtful that they wanted to forget. But when we
find the courage to tell the truth, other people find the courage to join us.\u00a0It\u2019s a relief to know that we aren’t alone. When a woman comes forward to\u00a0publicly report something violent, embarrassing or hurtful, other women come\u00a0forward, too, because they finally have the support to admit what happened to\u00a0them. I\u2019ve seen that drumming up the courage to speak about something shameful,\u00a0even something small, can free your mind and allow you to forgive yourself. The late Leonard Cohen, poet, singer\/songwriter and student of Tibetan Buddhism,\u00a0said, \u201cIt\u2019s easy to display a wound, a proud scar of combat. It\u2019s hard to show\u00a0a pimple.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I\u2019m So Embarrassed I\u2019m 14, about to audition for a scholarship at the American\u00a0School of Ballet. My mother and I had gotten up early and driven to Manhattanfrom Massachusetts. There was more traffic than we expected and I\u2019m nearly late\u00a0as I rush into the dressing room to change into my leotard and tights. I walk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions\/2247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}