Sometimes even if you drag your brain kicking and screaming through a mathematical topic, it just doesn’t give a shit. I felt the same thing about polynomial long division back in high school — it was just a bunch of gobbledeygook — so I’d forget how to do it, and then divide polynomials by ad-hoc trial multiplication/subtraction, until I figured out the most convenient way to do that was to first cancel away the leading term. And today, I’m uncomfortable with multivariable calculus. I’ve made a few abortive attempts to acclimate to it, and I’m sure I could force myself to get there if I needed to, but right now that’s just not important.