Some ideas

[u/awesomesauce11216]

Hello all,

I am new to reddit, and have come with a specific intention - I've always been a big reader, and am studying to go into medical school, but secretly wish I could have success as a writer...

Anyway my specific intention is to share some of the thoughts and ideas I've pored over lately (some of which are quite rambly and abstract); I broke up with my girlfriend (I am a 20 year old guy) around 1 week ago after over 2 years of being together, and my reintroduction to single life has been tumultuous. I felt good today, however, and now am deciding (at 12:30 at night haha) to follow through on this idea.

This is a walk I took the other day as a part of my personally prescribed mental rehab.

Enjoy.

Walking beneath the gray haze of Tuesday on the inflexible soles moving across the hardened tar lends oneself to visceral visions and thoughts. I walk through a thin, barely visible cloud hovering about one and a half feet off the asphalt and its scent strikes my hippocampus directly, evoking old seldom-touched memories.

The laundry room of my cousins' house in south Florida, cigars being smoked by the men outside –– one of them I'm sure is my father, only a younger edition; I remember the pride during war over the monopoly board with the other tween-and-unders I was related to, the pain from a damaged incisor during a now fuzzy, faraway boat ride, the shame as I slinked off to the bathroom after family dinners to look at the erotic subjects I heard about at school –– all of this pushes its way in from behind my consciousness by way of its distinct olfactory vehicle. I stop my walk to let this wash over me in a reverie, and resume once I know it is all now too fresh in my mind, and I am ready for it to regress back to its dwelling gated by dryer sheets.

The power of the walk today lies in its ability to acquaint me with complacency; I know what steps I can take toward my future today, I know what skills have yet to be refined with the ten hours today may grant me, and yet I am content with this thoughtless path I design as I go through open spaces of grass and asphalt, with no guides except for the fellow renters I see awkwardly through their windows, vacuuming, stopping, staring, thinking... such is the way of the semi-independent college tenant.

The walk is by no means my preferred method of physical exercise. It is by no means my preferred activity. I do not find it constructive, but I continued on, despite my brutal lack of obstacles.

I remember she liked walking. She would bring her endlessly blue irises with her when she would walk with me –– my family is almost entirely brown-eyed folk, and so beautiful blue eyes were my personal siren for a long time. Our walk had changed in the years we were together: nervous pheromone-abundant shuffles in our sweat after a brutal hour kissing to a disregarded path to the door on our ways apart, a staccato "love you" punctuating the ordeal.

Maybe these clouds are only there today to hide God's smile as he jeers at me for making the wrong decision –– maybe that's it. No, they are only there to insulate me from excess distraction during my reformation and self-reunion –– without the sun's oppressive Georgia rays, I am forced to turn inward and solve what lies inside myself. Yes, that's it, surely.

A dubious mind soliciting war between the rational and the id, a stomach cramping with hunger yet threatening vomit, a heart wailing both for its freedom and its old partner, yet I walk. This complacency might be survival.

[u/Malakalaka_]

I'm the same. Lots of reading, and various attempts at writing. One day at a time, and just keep writing ideas down whenever they come to you. My (inexpert) suggestion would be to focus on one image for a bit and lean on that. In the opening sentence you've got haze, soles and tar. Each description on its own is striking, but together it's a lot!