When I was around 8 years old I got lost at the beach in Galveston. It all started when my family decided to go to the beach because it was nice and sunny outside. When we got there we were surprised at how many people there were. None of us had ever gone to a beach before, so we didn't know how packed it would be. Once we found a spot to put our stuff at, we started to go in the water and have fun. I started to collect seashells and found out that I love doing that. Everything was okay and calm until it was lunchtime and my mom told me to call my aunt to come eat. 

               I started searching for my aunt, looking from left to right and taking careful steps, but I couldn't see her. I kept walking further and further from my family. For some reason, I never thought to stop walking and turn around. When I finally got tired and stopped walking, I thought to myself, ¨where am I¨? Once I realized that I didn't know where I was immediatly I felt a rush of fear and anxiety take over my body like a wave in the ocean.  The fact that there were so many people didn't help at all with how I was feeling it just made me feel worse.

          Since there were so many people there was a policeman in a golf cart going around making sure everything was okay. According to my family, he saw me and told people there might be a lost little girl. I never saw him,  maybe because I was so focused on being lost and not on my surroundings. That was pretty embarrassing for me because people saw me walking around and I must've looked crazy. When I finally came to my senses I was thinking about what I should do. I came up with the idea to just walk back the way I came. With me feeling a little better, calmer, I walked back until I saw someone I knew. When my family saw me they were relieved and they hugged me. When I saw them I was so happy I ran to them with tears of joy. After I explained everything to them they proceeded to laugh at me. It turned out that my aunt was in the deep part of the water wearing a bikini the color of the water. That explains why I couldn't see her.

             Since that day I learned to never go anywhere alone, ever. Not everyone feels the same way I do about this event, my family looks back and thinks of it as a laugh, I look back at it and think of it as a traumatizing event that has scarred me for life. Now anytime I go to the beach, if I dare go, I feel afraid and uneasy. Because of what happened my family rarely goes back to the beach, they don't want a repeat of that horrifying day. My family knows to never let me go near the water alone or ask me to look for something alone. This will forever be an unforgettable day that changed my life and the way I do things.