I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. The Slow down. I am far away from my adolescent days of singing along to R&B songs and wishing to be in love,

investigating my past with objective distance and time,

both being required of serious self-examination.

I now conclude I entangled myself in relationships

in which my emotions exceeded my capacity to truly love,

in the most exalted imminence of that word.

What I mean by this is that I was, to state it simply simply in love with being in love, which partially

accounts to being a poet. Though pursued with great seriousness, spontaneous dates, gourmet mills, small gifts, quickly dashed

off poems, music playlists, were almost never about my partner, but more about my ability to feel.

By the way, I did not learn this in therapy.

I wish I had. What a hard lesson to arrive at in my fourth

decade on earth. If you'll permit me a comparison, I am a fan of brunch, golden pastries, French press coffee,

parsley, gramilada, and mushroom omelets, fluted glasses of mamoses.

But I have learned that I am an even bigger fan of meeting up with friends on weekends.

The eggs never match the excellence of the company who ultimately satiate my appetite.

Brunch is merely the means by which I experience what I enjoy most.

My friends and their witty conversations and

banter. In relationships I was driven by curiosity and desire. Those early days of long nights on the phone, in retrospect,

seem purer. A relationship begins when matters of biography are long past and a couple works to decipher

the desperate behaviors and terrors that underlie our interactions.

That's what intimacy looks like.

...