A Small, and sticky, Breakthrough

Lately I have been a little - what I can only describe as, though I hate to use the word - depressed. Let's call it deflated. For a while I had been feeling pretty good. I had discovered a new found sense of self and really started caring about myself. I started going to the gym and eating better. I was writing and enjoying my classes, friends and even my time to myself, which used to leave me empty. But as the semester ended, a few things shifted and my upswing turned sour.
Lately I've been feeling apathetic and antisocial. I've been doing my best to combat it by forcing myself to go out, even when I don't feel like it and becoming involved in new projects. But my creativity suffered and when I went to put pen to paper nothing offered itself.
Yesterday, i finally had a spark. It was just an idea. A metaphor about old habits and stepping in gum. I thought it would grow into a poem. But as I wrote a little outline of rough lines, I was that my idea was more suited for prose. This is where it stands:

When the weather was cold, I stepped in a piece of gum. It was cornflower blue and caught my eye, standing out so from the black of the asphalt like a piece of fake Native American jewelry in a flea market.
Yes, I stepped in it deliberately. A rebellious detour through the parking lot, on the way from my car to Publix. It looked juicy and fun to have around for a while - and a little dangerous, who knows where it’s been?
But it was stickier than I thought and halted me in my tracks. Trying in vain to pull away, I forgot where I was going. In trying to free myself, it changed my course completely. I walked in the exit instead of the entrance. I hate people who do that. Can’t they be bothered enough to read the signs? I couldn’t. Not that day, preoccupied by my new saliva molded shoe brooch.
I moved on, but it clung on. It even effected my walking a little; I was jerky and stilted for a while. I probably looked like a fool, trudging about with this piece of gum sticking to my shoe. Refusing to wear other shoes. But these were my favorites. They were that perfect match of not quite red and turquoise-y blue. And they were worn to a comfort level that a Tempur-Pedic mattress couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Finally, it stopped sticking to the world. And only clung to me. It became dependent on me for its existence. It was an abusive relationship in both directions. I walked all over the gum and the gum never let me forget it. It molded to my shoe, filling in the grooves, causing me to lose traction and changing my footprints.
Over the weeks it began to wear away. I trudged far and wide. I walked to though new places and to new destinations. I left bits of the gum everywhere. Shedding it and its influence on me. But It was leaving its mark.
In the end, only a fragment remained. A lone sentinel of the once vast army. Its take over of my sole was all but over. It had lost its aquamarine luster and become an ugly shade of dark brown. It was a diseased blotch on my sneaker.
But how could rid myself of this last bit? I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I washed the shoe, but it didn’t do any good. It had almost become one with the rubber.
I accidentally found a semi-solution; walking through other things. I thought this worked - at first. But all it did was cover it up. Sometimes for a couple days, sometimes for weeks. Rich, dark soil seemed to hold the longest and feel the nicest, but I have to go home to find it. The dirt where I stay now just can’t live up to the high standards of the farmland. Though I’ve found one patch I like to stroll through when I’m feeling down. I’d like to try it barefoot.
But the gum always worked itself back out.
Now I really regret stepping in that piece of gum. I’d throw away the shoes, but I’ve had them so long.
And they look so lonely in the trash.