The Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

12/7/2007 - Last night's/this morning's dream

I was at some sort of long term class or retreat or training with a bunch of people from work. I was staying in a room with a few other people from my department at work (D-, T- and some others), adjoining a large hall where meetings were held (other people were also staying in rooms in the building or nearby. The building was near the beach. I must have been there for the long haul, because I had both my cats with me. There was a guy there (who I don't know in real life) who people keep asking me if I'd met up with, and saying that he had said he wanted to meet me or we should get to know each other. His name was Josh or Gerald or something beginning with a J sound. My mother had also mentioned him to me before I left. He had a long, disinterested and slightly above you face, and blond/reddish curly hair. I had a vague idea of who he was, having seen him around, but had not interest whatsoever in meeting up with him, he didn't strike me the right way.

Then came the most embarrassing incident of my life (dream or waking).

I woke up in the room, and still half asleep and tired, and in my pajamas (the same ones I was in at the time of the dream, actually), I got up and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. I left my pajama bottoms there, and had just discarded my pajama top in the entryway going into the bathroom, when I suddenly realized that there were people in the room. The entire hallway was filled with tables and other people from the retreat eating breakfast, both in the room I'd just walked across and the one I'd been about to enter. I was completely naked (except for my underwear), and had somehow walked across the room in my half-asleep state without realizing that I was disrobing in front of people.

The embarrassment was in every part of me, but there was nothing I could do, although I retreated after standing there with people staring at me for an unknown period of shock. I didn't know how I'd done this. Moments later, it got worse. The J-guy had taken a picture or video with his cell phone and had emailed it to the entire company. I knew that it was only a matter of time (very short time) until it appeared in the newspaper. Not only had the entire company seen me now and would know what I'd done, including my bosses and the CEO, back home, but also my parents! My husband, who hadn't wanted me to go to this thing in the first place! To add to the complete mortification, J- whatever his name was included comments in the email about my chubbiness and general bad shape of my body (exposed to all the world as it was). To not only be videotaped and distributed (which I didn't specifically fault him for, as if I knew that having done that, someone was bound to have taken a picture), but also criticized for the body I was exposing!

The members of my team who were there had been shocked and dumbfounded when I'd walked out, they were unsure what to make of it or why I'd done it. They weren't condemning me, and I guess could see that I'd been half asleep, but they didn't know what to say. I could tell they felt sorry for me but shocked at the same time. One of them, D- wrote me a note saying that I wasn't that chubby (as J- had said in his email accompanying the video, and also had been quoted in articles) and hadn't looked bad. He was trying to make me feel better and I did appreciate it.

It didn't end there though. I had to continue going through the seminar, passing by and talking to all these people, knowing that they'd seen me walk out naked. What sort of example had I made? I didn't know how I could keep going as embarrassed as I was, but somehow I did. Whenever I looked at anybody there I felt completely humiliated and mortified. This went on for days, continuing the seminar. It came out in the paper, and of course was posted online and on youtube, and people continued to whisper about it or mention it openly as I passed, while I tried not to react. No sort of explanation was really possible for me to make.

My cats wove in and out of the dream quite a bit, they were staying there with me in my room (which now seemed to be just me). I don't know how I kept going through the sessions but I did, it wasn't as if I could rewind or undo it, I just had to continue. Towards the end of the dream, I walked out and talked to a neighbor about the items that were in our respective yards (things from the beach, I think). I wondered if the neighbor had heard about me and suspected they probably had, who could avoid it. Then I walked down to the beach with my cat A-. He had been doing something interesting, but I don't remember the details anymore.