People's first memories tend to be around age 2 or 3. Not mine! I have a few memories of being an infant. I mean I assume I was an infant because I couldn't walk or move in any measured way, and I was in a crib. I know scientists say that memory is extremely fallible and unreliable, but I remember remembering these memories since young childhood. Also, I don't claim to know any super specific details. And these memories only make sense from a first-person perspective, unlike some other memories implanted through retellings by family members and friends, where I see them more in third-person.

What are the memories you ask? Well it's hard to articulate them, they were more feelings than events. When I was a baby, I remember coming in and out of consciousness. I couldn't exactly say that it was like an on-off switch; it could have been more graduated. But I do remember that it was possibly somewhat under my control. The times I remember were when I put an extreme amount of effort to try to be aware. I don't know why, I just knew that it was important for some reason, in a selfish way.

I remember in a vague sense waking up in my crib to see no one around. My crib was in another room, and when I woke up, I didn't know what was going on. I screamed and cried, partly because I knew that if I made noise, my parents would come to me if they were around. If my parents didn't come and comfort me, I could know that shit was going wrong. According to my parents, I “screamed bloody murder”, like I was getting stabbed.

Being a baby was fucking horrifying. I was dropped in a universe with no understanding of what is going on. My first memories are wondering what the fuck any of this is. Why do I exist? Of course, these questions were never answered. I'm trying to answer them, now that I can think in a more organized way.

If I was bolder, I would insist that I have memories from the womb, or at least a darkness before life. But because there are no sensory details from those “memories” — only thoughts — it's perhaps more plausible to assume that they are just constructs of my brain to explain the time before my life. But I will still retain the possibility that I have memories from the womb, no matter how crazy it sounds.

But all I wanted was some sort of reassurance that everything was ok. I wanted to know that this universe was pleasant. When you're born, you don't know if you're in heaven, hell, or something in between. It turned out to be something in between, but in a universe that makes no sense, there's no obvious answer.

I got that reassurance from my parents, who were luckily good people. I think some people get that reassurance from religions, which makes them so appealing. I don't think we grow out of that need for reassurance. We just find it in different ways. Ultimately, in a world of uncertainty, we need to place blind faith in something. I placed it in my parents. They knew more, they would protect me. I had no other option; as a baby, I was defenseless against possible threats.

Even in early elementary school, I thought my parents knew everything. When I was in kindergarten, I asked my dad to build a teleporter, because I thought he could do anything. I later learned he was limited, just like me. As I age, I realize just how alike I am to my parents, at least in our limitations.

It is scary to realize that you are on your own — that at the end of it all, nothing really makes sense. At the end of reason, what is one to do? Take a leap of faith, it seems. As a baby, I was so helpless that I took the leap of faith that my parents were my protectors. If I grew up in slightly different circumstances, then perhaps I would have turned to God next.

I think much of authority stems from this problem of meaninglessness and fear. Governments protect against the known threats, while gods protect against the unknown. How could one possibly resist? To resist authority is to forge your own path. But in a world with no meaning, no one can really do it. Some of us delude ourselves into believing we have it all figured out, but we don't. At some point, we need to give up.