My dad asked me to give it a month. He said I could always decide to come home later. I wanted to believe him. He was a logical man, and what he said sounded very logical. As a family we had decided Michigan would provide me with everything I wanted — the ideal college experience, a top-notch sports program, and freedom — but there, in that quad, I wanted out. There wasn’t a single strand of DNA in me that knew how to hear my dad. I knew I couldn’t stay in that dorm room with Erin for a day, much less an entire month. Not because I didn’t want to, but because my body wouldn’t allow it.

We decided to talk about it over dinner.

Inside the restaurant, I only felt more nauseous. I told my parents that I hadn’t stopped shaking since we’d gotten off the plane. I asked to sleep at their hotel instead of going back to my dorm room. My mom put her head into her hands and started crying. Then, miraculously, she agreed that yes, I could go back with them.

I could leave. Not just that restaurant, but that campus and that state.

So on my first day of college, while my peers were socializing and playing fun ice breakers with one another, I put my own unique stamp on the freshman experience and did the ultimate walk of shame. I went back to my dorm room, carried all of my luggage back to the minivan, and drove with my parents in silence to their hotel room. Erin wasn’t in the room at the time, and I didn’t even leave her a note.

***

When I landed back home in Los Angeles, I was too ashamed to tell people the truth. Primarily because I didn’t really understand what happened. I’d crumbled and cried the way I had done when I tried to drive to Venice, and when I walked to elementary school for the first time, but this time the consequences of my fear-driven decision were monumental. I’d left college before it even started. And it wasn’t Mom’s fault, or the way she raised me. It was my fault. I left Michigan. Me.

None of this would make sense to me until a full year later, when I was finally diagnosed with panic disorder. A doctor at my new, close-to-home college, UC Santa Barbara, said that my persistent fear warranted treatment. In Santa Barbara, my panic was only intensifying, preventing me from sleeping almost nightly. I had never even heard of panic disorder before, but I had to admit it made sense. I wasn't just a stressed person who had sweaty palms before school presentations, the doctor explained. I was someone who repeatedly experienced intense episodes of debilitating fear.

When I set out for college, I never considered that my tendency to panic — the thing that had controlled my decision making throughout my life — actually wasn’t all my mom’s doing. I was naive to think that it would just vanish. That it wouldn’t be right there with me, attached to my side, from the moment I boarded that plane and with me ever after.

Coming to terms with this truth — that panic is in fact a part of me — hasn't been easy. I wish I could say that with medication and the ensuing years of therapy, it's now gone for good. But the fact is, it will always be tethered to me.

I may have walked away from Michigan on the first day of school, but it wasn't the end of my story. It was the beginning of a new phase of my life, one during which I would learn how to work with my panic to overcome each overwhelming wave of fear as it comes.