I hope that someone here will be able to help me with my problem. I have a flash drive that I saved some of my important files on a year ago and I password protected it. The problem is that I have forgotten my password. Is there a program or a way to retrieve my password or go around it? Or am I basically screwed and those files are lost forever?

While it is most likely you are an honest sincere person, that is your personal flash drive, and you really did forget the password, we have no way of verifying that. You could just as easily have stolen that flashdrive from a house you broke into an hour ago. For this reason, posting information about hacking computer equipment is against the Rules you agreed to when you joined. So, sorry. We are not able to provide any help.

My advice is to take it all to a shop with proof of ownership and maybe they will help.