To learn, to not forget.
How to begin?
It starts with a frail attempt of not lying to ourselves. It starts with the sun streaming in weakly through blinds violently pulled together, almost magnetic, and not knowing how to live with the light. To not think of the hurt is to not think at all, and the mind has to learn how to convey that to the body, the body has to learn to accept to feel. There is nothing more illusory, more extraordinary, more dangerous than instant recovery - a skin that heals itself before it is torn, the memory of ache imbued so thoroughly that it becomes the source of everything.
They stack up like bets - layer upon useless layer of protective skin, until you can touch me and I can truthfully state that I no longer feel it. This is not to say that I am not aware of your presence near mine, that I am not immobilized by your skin on my own, for what the body does not know is concealed by the mind (which sees little benefit from this knowledge, anyway). To not feel the hurt is to not think of anything else; nothing implies that I am not dying inside, a little, every time.
How to advance? First unsighted and then disoriented, driven by the naïve desire to be good and do good (to be better and do better), tripping over these same cruel intentions, again and again, until a knee is no different from a battleground. The struggle to be on our feet takes longer than the skin does to mend. Eventually we lose our desire, or our intentions, I don’t know. Eventually we are good, we do better, and we trip because that’s what we’ve always done.
I think it stops when our bodies are earnest and no longer guilty. It stops when the skin tears itself open for fresh air, when the mind no longer feels the need to hide sentience. Eventually the walk becomes familiar and the occasional resulting scars become trophies, hung crookedly onto the walls of our mind. Not out of pride, because there will never be honor in hurting, but out of a need to be reminded of what it’s like to fall.