Are there things you've done in the past that you still feel really embarrassed about now?

[Alectoishome]

I was only 20 when I got married, 21 when I started having DC. I didn't realise that when guests come, because you've recently got engaged/promotion/new baby etc and they bring champagne.. you are supposed to open it while they are there. I just saw it as a gift like any other, it didn't occur to me to open it them. I think I blundered in this way on numerous occasions and still feel embarrassed when I think of it. I don't drink really anyway so it's not like I was keeping it back out of greed.

In the haze of several DC back-to-back I also had friends come to visit, sometimes from up to an hour away and a couple of times I offered them nothing more than tea/coffee as I think I just presumed they were calling in for an hour. But then it ended being for longer and I realised after they'd gone that it was after lunch and they'd surely gone away hungry.

Once I had a friend drive two hours with her DC to visit and I'd burnt the quiches I'd made so just tried to bluff the rest of lunch but it was so sparse and the house must've smelt of burnt food and I still feel mortified and think why did I not just say what had happened and also surely there was more food in the cupboards that I could have rustled up.

I'm sure there are so many others. I feel I went out into the world quite unprepared on what the 'done thing' is but also I think perhaps having three babies in 4 years sort of unhinged me temporarily in the sense I didn't really think about things like social niceties as well as I should have? Sometimes I see threads on here about CFs and I think 'oh god was I CF back then?' I never wrote a single thank you card for wedding, newborn, christening gifts etc.

There were also many occasions I did all the right things, made guests lunches, dinner etc - but I just cringe at the ones where I seem to had temporarily forgotten how to behave!

Do you have things from the past that you still feel embarrassed about? I have other memories too of falling over during a work presentation and other moments where I wanted to sink through the floor but those occasions are no reflection on my character so it's a different kind of embarrassment.

So many and they all come back to me just as I want to fall asleep 😂
I led a very sheltered childhood/adolescence and on my first ever night out I didn't know what to order at a bar. The only drink I'd ever heard of was Baileys so that's all I ordered for the first goodness-knows how many nights out. I look back and realise how weird I must have looked to everyone else drinking alcopops etc. 😂
Also, I remember my first work induction as a proper professional, we were told to think of one thing we do well and one thing we'd like to improve, I went first and said I wanted to be a better driver because I can't parallel park. It was only after everyone else went that I realised I was meant to pick a work related skill!

In general I am pretty shameless and don’t do embarrassment. I am embarrassed to think of all the crap men I wasted time and emotional energy on though.

Too bad to talk about even now.

So so many. Things like that still make me cringe decades later. Arrrgghh!

The parallel parking has made me giggle 😂

I did something awful and unforgivable at the age of 16. I still feel ashamed about it now it was horrific. I know why I did it and I should be kinder to myself but it was terrible

I tell myself that the course leader should have been clearer with her instructions 😂

The champagne one… I got champagne with dd1 and didn’t even think of opening it haha!
I’ve done loads of stupid things but tend not to dwell. Most of the things we cringe at, I doubt others even remember

When I was about 6 I deliberately and maliciously shoved a much smaller little girl off a roundabout and she cried and I completely denied doing it. I have no idea why I did it. It was 40 years ago but it really sticks out and bothers me.

In a bar I was talking to a bloke for some
time before realising that I had in fact shagged him some time ago. He clearly remembered, I had completely forgotten. It was in my wild years, and I was mostly off my face but even so…..that haunts me quite a lot. I completely denied it and he must’ve thought I was crackers.

There was also the time at a work conference when I was young where I drank red wine at the gala dinner and missed the entire remaining conference vomiting - I had to fly back with colleagues and pretend I’d been at the whole thing but in reality I’d checked out of the hotel and hidden myself in Glasgow until it was time to go, I was green and shaking from dehydration on the flight. I hadn’t actually drunk a lot but I didn’t know at the time that my body does not like more than half a glass of red wine and I thought I must’ve drunk too much (but I really hadn’t). I still can’t touch it. I don’t know why I couldn’t have said I was ill and older me would’ve extended the hotel booking so I could’ve at least slept it off in comfort. But instead I mooched about in the streets freezing and wanting to die.

There’s loads of others but I’m not admitting those on here!

Don't feel embarrassed about not opening champagne that people have bought as a gift. It's really not a thing; often people have just bought it for you to celebrate with not because they want a drink!

Loads. All of them much worse than burning quiches. I'm not going to spill them here though. I will put them in the furthest corner of my dark black heart and pretend that I can't see their wayward tendrils creeping forward, ready to choke any fresh bud of hope, self worth and clarity that I labour to bring to existence. Yes.

My life is just one long huge embarrassment 😂 I ruminate over them often but it’ll never end

Bloody hell now I won't sleep I have a picture reel of my late teens and early 20s prior to meeting my husband in my head.
Shudder.

I once shouted a really inappropriate comment out loud at a work do. I have no idea why, I’m generally quiet. It was almost 20 years ago and it makes me cringe still. It definitely would have embarrassed the person it was about. I liked the person too. It just came out and I still think about it now!

A few that I will never forgive myself for but which will never ever see the light of day.

But my most embarrassing work moment was at a new job induction with about 15 other new starters. I will preface by saying that I was in a bit of an odd time in my life and had become rather interested in spirituality owing to some vivid dreams I was having (due to medication, which I didn't know at the time).

When the facilitator asked us to each in turn tell the group a fact that not many people knew about us. Not only did I say that I was clairvoyant, I also earnestly said that I could "read" and communicate with animals based on a photo. My new boss asked me if I could find her lost cat.

Same 🤣🤣 Thank god that the Internet was in it's infancy back then 😫🙈

Yes. Everyone does. You grow and move on and try to forget -- until friends or family remind you because they think it's funny!

Oh gosh, endlessly kept awake at night by things I said and did 20 years ago. But you can definitely let go of the champagne one! It’s a present, for you to enjoy at a time of your choosing. You absolutely did not commit a faux pas by not opening it there and then.

I'm autistic, fairly high masking to most people I think, but it just makes it all the more embarrassing - regularly realise that I've outstayed my welcome and just been rambling on to people without picking up the cues that it's time to leave... I try not to think about it too much but my lack of awareness sometimes means I have plenty of cringe moments in the present, not just the past!

Linked to the alcohol one, I used to think it was ok to take home the remainder of whatever alcohol I'd taken to a house party or gathering. Didn't realise it was polite to leave it as a gift!

God I've got some cringy ones, I once said to a guy I thought I was in love with.. Most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and spending the rest of my whole life never feeling the way I feel dramatic pause when I'm with you.
If that reads familiar it's because it's a line from Dirty Dancing 😂

I'm autistic so this is basically my lifestyle.

I have had a day of my mind playing it's favourite mortifying moments from my life. It has plenty to choose from. . .

Yes. Awful things in my 20’s. Normally when off my face that I cringe about now I’m 40 with kids. I’m a terrible person….the shame. Sounds awful but I’m sure at the time it seemed fun and I wasn’t ashamed, which makes seem even worse now!

Are we twins?!

Only my drink thing was Cinzano because it was the only alcohol name I could remember and my parents had a very dusty bottle in the cupboard probably for Christmas. It was a first date too and I was just under 18 in the pub - probably only let me in because I was the only person trying not to look dressed up - jeans and an uncool band t-shirt... we did date for five years though in the end! Cinzano in a pub in 1996... no mixer mind you, didn't know to ask for one!!!

And work, yes I hear you, I was asked: "What do you want to change?" I went first and said something along the lines of the fact that I thought that First Past The Post was a ridiculous undemocratic way of voting (thank you A-Level Government and Politics), but everyone else spoke about stuff within the company we were working for... I am blushing even as I type this (but to be fair I also still believe that!)

@MaybeItsBecauseImALodoner omg I am dying, this is so amazing 😂😂 In coffee shops in my early 20’s I used to stare off into the distance broodingly whenever emotional songs came on thinking I looked really pensive and interesting to passers by, wanker 🙃