It doesn't hurt as much as you think, depending on where you get hit.
The chin is a fragile enough point that if you take a punch there, it shakes up the entire head and sends the brain spinning. It's not pleasant because it disconnects everything and shuts the lights off.
But it is nothing like getting hit in the body.
When my brother and I used to spar as kids, one of the things he liked to do is challenge me to see who could take the harder shots to the torso. I always lost, because it always felt like it hurt worse. Unlike a head shot, which switches your senses off, taking one downstairs shuts your body down while keeping your head lucent.
You can't breathe, think, or move. You are completely and utterly paralyzed, while your brain is screaming at you to get back up off the ground, even when your ribs, liver, kidneys or even your heart is telling you that you can't.
In the last year, I've been trying to convince myself to get back up and not quit on the things I still want to do with however many years I have left in this life. I want to stand up and and keep going. There's only one small problem.
I seem to have lost any and all measure of faith in my ability to take another punch of any kind and that's a very frightening prospect to consider.
I don't want to get hurt again and if I get back up and return to the fray, the chances of that happening go up too. Take enough of those shots and no matter what the primal, bestial part of ourselves which is and always will be tailored for combat tries to tell us, the body can decide on its own.
"Stay down," it says. "They can't get to you if you just stay down."
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