Diary Entry #1: A History of Being Scared

I was seven and it was my first day of the second grade. I was just this little girl with brown hair in a pixie cut. I was wearing dark blue cargo shorts and a dark blue striped tank top. I always remember what I wore on my first days of school.
My elementary school was up the street and through the woods from my house. I was a "walker" because I was so close that the school district didn't waste money on sending a bus to my neighborhood.
Walking up my street that morning was the first time I remember being scared in a way that I have come to know way too well. 
What I was feeling was more than the normal first day of school butterflies. I couldn't breathe. I felt nausea to my core. All I wanted to do was go home. I didn't know why. This was my third year going to this school as a student but, since my mother was the PTA president, I had been going up there since I was about three.
The children in my class were mostly the same from the year before. My teacher was a good friend of my mother's that I was already very close with. I had no reason to be scared. But I was.
Anyone that has experienced panic or anxiety attacks will tell you that the first one you have is the most terrifying. That's because the victim doesn't know what is happening to them. 
But as a seven year old, I couldn't even comprehend that there was nothing wrong around me. I couldn't see that this was just an internal thing happening in my mind.
I got into school. We played a game to get to know each other as a class. I walked up to my teacher to ask her if I could use the bathroom. And I vomited all over her. 
It's okay, you can laugh. It's pretty funny. And it's also one of those stories that still gets retold at parties now, over a decade later. 
But it was the first time in my life that I was truly scared. Little did I know at the time that twelve years later I would be sitting in my college dorm room reflecting on it, realizing that it was my first panic attack.