Not Remembering Who I Am

The question of whether or not you are yourself if you can't remember your past terrifies me. I'll start with the idea that I can't remember my past and my first reaction is terror. This would be horrible. Then I begin to think who would I be without my past. I feel that a persons past is crucial to who they are. My entire past has shaped the person I am today and I cannot imagine living without it. I would be a totally different person. I don't think it is really possible to preserve who you are without the memories of your past. I can point to exact moments in my past that change who I am. These moments are who I am; they have become ways to identify myself in all aspects. Some of these moments include when I was not allowed to play football during recess because I was a girl; when I and my boyfriend were subject to racial slurs and discrimination; or when I realized at the age of 6 that people are hated simply because they are different, even in elementary school. These are some of the defining moments in my life and if I ever were to forget them, I would not be who I am today.

The question of whether or not you are yourself if you can't remember your past really terrifies me because there was a time when I could not remember anything and I still can't remember anything about that time. Four years ago, I was snowboarding and I had an accident. I was breaking in my brand new snowboard and pathetically I was on the bunny hill since I hadn't snowboarded in about five years. I was doing the last run before I was going to go in to eat and the slopes were really icy. About halfway down, I caught my edge and I guess I must have flipped over a few times in the air. I remember waking up with my head facing down the hill, sprawled out on my back with a serious headache (yes, I did have a helmet on). I managed to snowboard down, check my board, go in the lodge, and ask my teachers (it was a school trip) for some ibuprofen. I ended up in the ski patrol clinic with an EMT freaking out as I got dizzy, tired, and nauseous. They called my mom and she rushed to the resort and told them to call the ambulance if I got any worse. Once she got there, we headed to the ER as I got progressively worse. She kept debating whether or not to got to the hospital where my dad worked or the one that she had never heard of. By the time we go to the ER, I was really worse for wear and they rushed me into the CAT scan to make sure my brain wasn't bleeding. The diagnoses was a major concussion (my fourth) and I was sent home. This is where my memory ends. I don't remember the next two and a half weeks at all. My parents told me that I went to school five days after the accident; I don't remember it at all. They also told me that my personality was gone; I don't remember. I don't remember anything about those two and a half weeks; all I know was told to me by my parents and friends. I will never remember those two and a half weeks. My memories begin when my mom said I started to get my personality back. I ended up missing a month of school and making up everything over the next two months. I saw a neuro-trauma specialist and learned that that helmet that I had resented because it made me look silly had saved my life. But the thing that ended up scaring me the most (once I realized that I was not going to die) was that I can't remember what happened the days after I crashed. Not being able to remember is scary and I only can't remember two and a half weeks. If I could not remember anything in my past, that would be truly horrifying. My memories and experiences are who I am.