I used to love the abstract symbolic manipulation of pure math, but have not worked with it in many years and find it unintuitive now. I have a harder time trus

I used to love the abstract symbolic manipulation of pure math, but have not worked with it in many years and find it unintuitive now. I have a harder time trusting the abstractions. I wonder how to get my old sense back - it never, ever came from practice problems for example in the past. I miss proofs