I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

After a four-year relationship dissolved, a friend, Jennifer, said,

I think you should try to be alone for a year.

She might as well have said you should travel to Mars on a flying tricycle.

That may well work for monks, I countered.

But you forget my need for validation and comfort

is several galaxies long. We both laughed over the phone. She referred to abstinence as a

cleansing, a restraint that results in clarity. Several years prior, she and her wife parted ways.

I witnessed her beautiful recovery. She did not give up on love. She just paused on putting

herself in intimate relationships that sometimes muddled her intentions and needs.

You discover what you really want in a partner by discovering what you love about yourself,

Jennifer said.

I so appreciated her counsel, but still I could not envision myself isolated from the world of possibility.

See, I have a natural curiosity about people.

It has me believe the great mystery of our existence is solved by the person we love and bring into our life. I journeyed through several relationships before I gave Jennifer's advice some mustard.

I didn't date for half a year.

I needed to weather a few more storms to arrive at her well-earned wisdom, and thus at my own pace.

Today's poem puts us in touch with what it means to experience unadulterated

joy, one that is owed to an exquisite contentment. Gratitude by Patrick Dundon. Today, I think I am healed.

I do not want what I do not have.

Even the lover who sleeps across town,

one of my hairs trapped behind his ear,

...