What is a person's earliest memory?
The first impression of this world.
For most, it is something small. Unremarkable. Blurred at the edges by the passage of time, preserved not because it deserved to be, but because it was simply the most extreme thing a young mind had encountered up to that point.
A bad fall. A sudden pain. The shock of something going wrong.
The memory carries with it the feeling, the fear in that moment. The panic and the overwhelming dread you felt in that small body, vulnerable to the world.
These fears cling long after the details have faded. The context, the location. All you remember is the action that led up to that fear. It's how most learn.
Because as a child, everything is frightening. The world is a hostile place where no child can survive without help, so the mind treats everything with the same wariness.
