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

We ask it all the time in greeting, how are you when I was younger, what's happening?

To that casual question, for the first time during the global health crisis, my relatives

and close friends did not lie.

Did not refrain from giving an honest rundown on their lives and states of being.

I learned of a cousin living alone who was suffering low-grade depression.

I learned of friends who hit their limit of balancing 24-hour parenting and work meetings,

stressed from cohabitating in a three-room apartment during shelter-in-place orders.

I've always been aware that our outward lives are often what one astute writer calls

our own supreme fictions.

So I appreciate it getting the real picture behind curated Instagram feeds of exotic vacations

in Burma and Michelin star dinners.

Either owed to social conventions of propriety or desire to give the appearance of success

and stability, what became clear to me was the extent to which we were deceiving each

other.

In the quote, before time, it seemed we dedicated a great amount of time to staging.

If not on social media, then in our everyday interactions, I'm well.

We said, all good in the hood, we said, couldn't be better, can't complain.

But in fact, many of us have been emotionally bursting at the seams, processing stressful

situations or past traumas or navigating decisions without the aid and friendship

from those closest to us.

I was one of those who would come to the aid of a friend at the drop of a text or phone

...