"What is your biggest fear?"

That question is normally quite simple to answer; for some people it's heights and for others it's clowns. Sometimes snakes or spiders, or maybe even the dark. The feeling of being alone or sitting in a space that's too tight for comfort. While all of these are rational, and some of them I may share, none of them can ever seem to come close to my fear of forgetting a moment or losing a memory.

I fear that one day when I listen to my once favorite songs the only memory I'll have is the lyrics, rather than how the song made me feel on a summer day in the car with my friends or how it made me cry when I sat on my bed as the rain poured outside. I fear that I will spray on my favorite perfume and not be taken back to my trip to New York or the one night out with my friends when school finally ended. Though not tangible, memories are precious and personal and one of the biggest parts of who we all are. How frightening it must be to lose those that once meant so much to you.

I am afraid of one day being asked "remember when?" and not being able to answer. Some people may think if you lose a memory it wasn't worth it in the first place, but what about the days you spend with your friends, the ones where you think to yourself "I am the luckiest person in the world to have met these people." I fear that one day the color red won't take me back to the once best night of my life when the lights at that concert all blazed a bright, blood red. Those days that make you love who you are and what you're doing and that put a smile on your face on even the darkest days. What would happen should you forget those small moments in time? Sure we can't remember everything but what if we lost all of the moments that made us smile, made us feel nostalgic, made us find peace.

Maybe losing memories can be good. Maybe a certain smell brings back a terrible memory and maybe a certain place is a reminder of all that's been lost. But even losing those memories changes who you are. It can make you less empathetic, less helpful. We become who we are through the good and the bad memories, and taking away those remimders could alter us completely, change the way we act towards the ones we love, change the way we look at life, and change the way we interact with others.

And though I may fear spiders and planes and small spaces, none of those could ever compare to the feeling of despair I get once the feeling of a good time and the memory of happiness fades away into nothing.