Hi, my love.

Writing to you old school, in the air. En route to London to take a really important selfie.

(I know that sentence sounds ridiculous.)
(But it is true!)
(I’ll write the whole ttalk about it next week, when I have more time / sanity)

For now I think this will be short. Flying with the world fully open and most people unmasked is just all the way too much for me. I’m trying to take deep breaths under my N95 and remind myself that just because all this new trauma is in my nervous system (well hello there, new trauma! there’s lots more before you! life is fun!) I am not actually unsafe at the moment.

Trying to do so by leaning on my own knowledge of PPE’s efficacy and the absolute peace I felt earlier this week in a Hamsterdance studio.

This approach is working. Sometimes.

It is also not working. In such moments I am crawling out of my skin. A new feeling for me, one that came up a lot this week.

(Almost a leftover agoraphobia.)

It is unpredictable, hits completely at random. More than ADHD over stimulation, more than a natural stop point. The feeling is clear and it is mammalian and my body says “shut it down. no more people. home. now.”

I’ve done my best to honor it, to not shame myself and to do whatever is necessary to de-escalate my nervous system.

But I can’t exactly do that here on British Airways 049, so I’m typing to you instead.

(hi, my love.)
The very cute baby in front of me is shrieking about the clouds.
José is playing a video game.
There is a drunk guy a few rows back who needs us all to know how much alcohol he has consumed.

The world is back.

And my life is fucking moving along. The album was mastered this week, but it’s not quite there yet. Mastering is sorcery, totally badass sorcery, so I don’t even know how to explain that it’s not quite there. Here’s the email I sent to the team.

Funny, right? All of this chaos and I’m preparing to write back to Abbey Road and say, “Make it hurt more, please.”

Because I deserve to honor that pain. It happened.

I lean on Bender, I lean on you. I do my best.

I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that if you, like me, are hitting a saturation point at inconvenient and completely random times, I’m sending you my love.

The world fell apart, millions of human beings died. Hell, my husband and I came close.

And now the world is open. Most of us got barely any seconds to breathe, let alone grieve the whole shit show that occurred.

But it all did happen.

You’re not insane, I’m not insane.

And I love you.

More next week.
t