Whew, that was embarrassing

Looking back at the photos we wish we could erase and why we shouldn’t

“Oh noo, stop it, that’s so embarrassing.”

It’s me, in a little printed square from when we froze the time, the moment, back in 2007. I was in 7th grade, actually. This is the self-portrait from the school photoshoot.

There I am, in all my glory. The roots of my hair being my own color, which then fades into a darker ashy color, which then fades into orange, and then ending in yellow. I had four different colors in my hair. I had no idea we had this shoot this particular day since I had been sick and away from school.

That’s how I ended up here, in this moment, staring at my hair that looked like it had just been colored, then washed out in a washing machine. And then thrown into the dryer on high. It was horrifying.

Not to mention all the teenage acne, little bumps here and there. I hadn’t learned to open my eyes a little more when snapping pictures yet either, so I look tired from the weight of my eyebrows.

Sitting on the living room couch, this is the image I wish I could erase from history. It’s embarrassing. Maybe I should donate it to some hair studio, I’m sure they could get a laugh out of it, but then I snap back, embarrassing.

We were just going through some old pictures with my mom. The couch covered up in boxes. Laughing, remembering. Wishing. Being nostalgic.

It’s always so interesting to hold up a picture, a snapshot of the moment you were in. It’s momentary. Paused. I like to pretend and think what happened right after the snap, hands and bodies move ever so slightly. It’s crazy to think we have these machines that can capture the moment. Wild. You see it, you snap, and you have it forever.

The curtain is dancing by the window as the fresh air comes through the room. The air is starting to cool down. A soft crisp breeze. It’s like it’s wanting to tell you, the seasons are changing. Fall is here, and winter is coming.

The AC is humming in the background. Letting us know that we should probably close the window, but we’re rebels like that. We like to have both worlds on at the same time. For a moment.

I go back to the picture I’m holding. This tiny square. Teenager. I remember those years, they were hard. Felt like everyone in the school was trying to find their way through life, find themselves, figure out what they wanted from life.

We were all scared to embarrass ourselves in one way or another.

I remember that day I was hopeful. Hopeful that the picture wouldn’t turn too bad. I kept thinking, what’s the worst that can happen? I will have a horrible picture I want no one to see? Yeah. Yeah. If only I had known.

Back then, everything felt possible. Doctor, firefighter, soccer player… no limits. And now I look back and call it embarrassing? How unfair is that?

And now, almost a few decades later, you look back and think, “Wow, I sure was embarrassing back then. What was I thinking?“

But is it? Is it really embarrassing? Or am I just on some high horse now, judging me back then, for things that I did? The same person. A person who was just trying to navigate through life the best she knew. And she knew next to nothing about life. Even though she thought she did. How is that embarrassing?

And am I going to look back to this time, this present moment, in a few decades, thinking, wow, what an embarrassment I was? I would like to think not.

Maybe, she was brave. She didn’t know about this shoot and still went on it and smiled anyway. With wicked hair color(s). She was brave to hope for the best from the future. She was brave for keeping to herself all through school. She was brave for being picky with who she associated with. And to me, there is nothing embarrassing about that.

Maybe embarrassment is just proof you lived loud enough to be seen.

But it’s easy to look at a photo and declare how embarrassing it is.
Honestly, it’s easy to look at your life, or a mistake you made, and say how embarrassing it is.

But then we overlook all the other things that are surrounded by that embarrassment. We tried to do the thing, maybe we failed and label it as embarrassing now, but we tried. You were brave. I was brave enough to walk in front of that camera and smile.

Why would I label anything I did in my life as embarrassing? It means I lived a life. I felt it. Because when you add all those stupid meaningless moments, like your embarrassments, your obsessions, your accomplishments, you know what they equal to? Your life.

How much more am I going to let embarrassment take from me? My life is not embarrassing, it shows that I lived. Truly. Loudly. Authentically.

We talk around embarrassment like it’s this big bad negative thing. But maybe, just maybe, there is something more to it.

Maybe it just shows you’re human. I could easily sit there few decades from now saying how embarrassing it is that I had a business that failed. Or, I could tell myself a different story. How brave I was for trying.

Not everyone can say that. And that is nothing to be embarrassed about.

I stare at my picture, with my glorious hair, and grab a pen and write behind it “brave.” As if I’m trying to rewrite the story.

I take a new stack of pictures in my hands.

There’s this photo of me as a kid, wearing a bathrobe and heart-shaped sunglasses, passed out under the coffee table after a tantrum. I’d thrown all the books and magazines onto the floor first, then fell asleep inside the little space between the tabletop and the bottom shelf, like I was part of the furniture. I wish I could say there was only one of these. There are multiple. Thankfully, some habits you grow out of.