embarrassing moment, crying, tears

Oh my goodness! The most embarrassing thing happened to me today at school ! T_T I don't know if any of you have heard of poetry out loud. In my school everyone has to do it every year. Well, this year, I didn't take as much time to get my poem well memorized, I thought I would have it, I was able to say it before going up in front of the class, but as I was going to the mini podium, I could feel my heart racing, which is normal for any presentation in front of the class by myself, but because I didn't memorize the poem well enough, I couldn't think of some of the words, so I paused for awhile, and I guess I had the nervous feelings of "omg I can't remember the next part and everyone's watching me look stupid gahh this is awful!" which probably didn't help me in trying to remember what came next. I had to get prompted by the teacher a few times, and I felt so terrible I just wanted to leave, but I finally got through it, and then rushed back to my seat. Now this is where the worse part comes. The waterworks.
First, let me explain. I don't know if any of you guys are like this, but I'm someone who doesn't ever want to be seen crying. It's an extremely humiliating thing for me, so I try my best to avoid it at all times. If I feel the need to cry I will make sure I'm by myself so no one can see me. Usually if I'm around people and I can feel tears coming to my eyes, I'll push them back and not let them out so I can appear fine. But the thing is, every once in a blue moon, people notice and approach me, and as soon as someone does, I can't fight the tears back, I can't control them coming out.
That's whart happened. A classmate came over to me with words of comfort saying, it's okay, at least you went up there and did it and stuff. The tears came stronger, so I put my head down to try to hide them and then someone else, or maybe the same person( I couldn't look up to see who it was), came to me, hugging me and sharing more words of comfort, and i'm just thinking, "please go away, I want to go unnoticed" I mean, I appreciate it and all, but people just don't know that it's best to pretend they don't see me crying than to approach me. It makes me feel that much worse. Then the person offered to go to the bathroom with me, and I nodded and got up and left, and people could see I was crying which was even more embarrassing, but then person didn't follow me out so I was kinda confused. Anyway, I went to the nearest bathroom but the door was locked so I just stood in the hallway trying to calm myself down, so when I went back in there I wouldn't be crying anymore,
anyways thats pretty much what happened and now I need to get over it and move on, but it takes some time for me to get over things like this. Just bringing the memory back it feels awful! Can anyone relate? I'd feel a lot better knowing people are like me in this sense ^^

I'm glad you got through it!

I know what you mean by people trying to comfort you making it worse. I still occasionally think back to one time I was sort of tearing up but trying to keep it together in 5th grade and my teacher came over saying "it's okay, don't cry, it's okay" and I just burst into tears.

In class last semester if I couldn't stop myself from crying I always put my head down to look like I was sleeping, tried to not sob, and counted on my classmates' paying too much attention to class or most-definitely-not-class to notice I wasn't sleeping. Also putting my head down and breathing evenly to convince others I'm napping sometimes just helped calm me down and I didn't end up crying at all.

Here's where I'm going to also try to offer comfort and if you don't want it feel free not to read but it's what gets me through any presentations I'm frightened of or helps me if I mess up. It also assumes that you were bothered by the number of people who saw you mess up. If it was a school-wide presentation most people probably weren't paying attention, assuming your school is at least 20 or so people. I've found that even 20 individual presentations are enough to have most people losing focus on any except for the first, the ones before and after theirs, and the ones of good friends.

aha that's a smart idea ^^
well, I presented it to my classroom, a little more than 20 students. thanks for the words of comfort. I know people don't really care anymore and are over it, but I've still been beating myself up over it especially since other kids who were pretty much just as nervous as I was didn't volunteer to go on Friday, and we ended up running out of class time to get through everyone, so the second half of the class actually got to present today. if I had gone today, I would have had the poem better memorized and not looked so bad up there! It's all just really upsetting.. I'll get over it eventually though.