As difficult as it can be to fathom, incomparable No. 99 is human

Larger than life and absolutely superhuman.

Unstoppable and unbreakable, but always so real that only the heartless could doubt his truth.

The biggest thing in Houston and the greatest hero the Texans have had.

And now J.J. Watt’s cracked, shattered and lost.

Remember what it was like watching Matt Schaub fall apart?

Multiply that by 100, pick your broken heart up off the floor, and try to imagine the Texans without No. 99.

My lord. It’s unimaginable. The man who’s never missed a game could now be gone for the season. And all I can wonder is whether a lit-

eral living legend will ever be the same. Watt as Superman. Watt living in his own version of Beatlemania.

Watt as a modern NFL god in the nation’s fourth-largest city, turning anything he touched into instant gold and the Texans into what often felt like Houston’s only prime-time show.

Did he rush back too soon? Try to fly too far too fast?

We came to terms years ago with the thought that Justin James Watt, aka Just A Kid From Pewaukee, Wisconsin, could do anything he wanted the second he dreamed it.

Meteoric rise

From no-name tight end to the next Lawrence Taylor. From invisible pizza boy to the top of the world. From small-town hockey lover to Peyton Manning’s only rival as the most overexposed, commercialized and promoted football superhero on the planet.

And then Watt had two mysterious surgeries after winning his third AP Defensive Player of the Year award in four years, fighting through the final games of 2015 with a heavily wrapped club replacing his human hand.

We still figured there was no way anything would ever really touch J.J. Until Tuesday night. Bill Belichick 27, Bill O’Brien 0 last Thursday in New England was national humiliation. Watt on injured reserve out of nowhere, in the season when the Texans finally have a quarterback, is a local tragedy.

You can’t walk across Kirby Drive on Sunday without seeing 100 No. 99s. You can’t spell Texans without W-A-T-T. And now we’re standing in a place we never thought we’d be. Watt is vulnerable. Watt has been broken. Watt — 76 sacks in 83 games; Reggie White, part II; no-brainer instant Hall of Fame pace — is human, touchable and prey to the same falls and fractures that cut down the league’s best every week.

Hero to the masses

There was always so much about Watt that was too good to be true. Then he touched millions of hearts — those of cops, firefighters, moms, kids with cancer — and you realized it was useless to deny his strength. He only grew more powerful with each passing year.

Now his back, of all things, betrays him just when Bob McNair buys in and real hope returns to Texans land? Life can be such a ____. I remember Watt last season, publicly questioning how much longer he could live as a supremely devoted NFL warrior.

I picture Watt standing strong behind a podium just before another 16game battle began in 2016, explaining what it was like to have his surreal power back and relaying the dark thoughts that depressed his mind when he feared he might never again play the sport that created him.

I recall the sight of Watt painfully inching down NRG Stadium’s darkened hallway after Week 1, when his body was telling him he’d tried to do too much too fast.

Watt lasted three weeks. He had one good game. He was a shell of himself in New England. Then unstoppable, unbreakable No. 99 officially cracked for the first time.

It’s a cruel, cruel world if you’re a Texans lover. From 12-4 and Gary Kubiak to 2-14, Bill O’Brien and the AFC South crown. From all those cheap, discarded QBs to Brock “The Answer” Osweiler. And now this?

Jadeveon Clowney’s finally figuring it out. The one Texan who never let you down suddenly vanishes without a trace.

Watt carried the Texans for so darn long. Now his back is breaking, and we’re all wondering the same painful thing: Will No. 99 ever be the same?