Where I am, what I'm doing, how I'm doing and how I got here

posted by Neil Gaiman

Hullo from Scotland, where I am in rural lockdown on my own.  I'm half a world away from Amanda and Ash, and missing both of them a lot. We check in on screens and phones twice a day, when I get up and before I sleep (which is when they go to sleep and when they get up) but it's not the same.
I was in New Zealand with them until two weeks ago, when New Zealand went from the Level 4 lockdown it had been on for the previous 5 weeks down to Level 3. I flew, masked and gloved, from empty Auckland airport to LAX, an empty international terminal with only one check in counter open -- the one for the BA flight from LAX to London. Both flights were surreal, especially the flight to London. Empty airports, mostly empty planes. It reminded me of flying a week after 9/11: everything's changed.
I landed in London about ten in the morning, got a masked car service to a friend's house. He had a spare car (bought many years ago as a birthday present for his daughter, but she had never learned to drive), with some groceries for me in a box in the back, waiting in the drive, with the key in the lock. I drove north, on empty motorways and then on empty roads, and got in about midnight, and I've been here ever since.
The journey was, as I said,  surreal. It was also emotionally hard. Amanda and I had found ourselves in a rough place immediately before I left (my fault, I'm afraid, I'd hurt her feelings very badly, and... actually beyond that it's none of anyone else's business). We agreed that we needed to give each other some space, which had been in very short supply in lockdown in New Zealand. So it was a sad sort of flight, even without the world in lockdown, and a sad sort of drive.
(You can read all about how we got to New Zealand and why we were there at all at  http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2020/03/on-beach.html. And, for the curious, the song that's currently stuck in my head is mostly Al Stewart's ���Warren Gamaliel Harding���.) 
I needed to be somewhere I could talk to people in the UK while they and I were awake, not just before breakfast and after dinner. And I needed to be somewhere I could continue to isolate easily, which definitely isn't our house in Woodstock, currently at capacity with five families who have fled Manhattan and Brooklyn and Boston. 
Once the world opens up and travel gets easier Amanda and Ash and I are looking forward to being together again in Woodstock. (Yes, I've seen the newsfeed headlines saying I've moved to the UK, and even that we're divorcing. No, I haven't moved the UK, and yes, Amanda and I are still very much together, even with half a world between us.) 
Thank you to everyone who's been kind and nice and helpful, while Amanda and my problems got rather more public than either of us is comfortable with. We love each other, and we love Ash, and we will sort ourselves out, in private, which is much the best place for things like this.
It's rough for almost everyone right now ��� some people are crammed together and wish they weren't, some are alone and crave companionship, pretty much all of us are hurting in one way or another. So be kind. Be kind to each other, be kind to Amanda (who is getting a huge amount of undeserved internet flack for this, some of it really cruel),  and if you ever meet him (he will tell you very seriously everything he thinks about zombies, or his latest zombie-supplanting discovery, Richard Scarry's detectives), be kind to Ash.
Neil



PS: Amanda and I wrote a letter together, for the curious and for the bits of the world that is wondering what's going on, and whether they should worry about it. Feel free to send anyone who wants to know how we are and what's happening to read it.

Dear Everybody.

This has been a hard few weeks for us.  We are not getting divorced. It���s not that exciting.

We love each other very deeply. As sometimes happens during the course of a long marriage, we have hurt each other. We have lived our lives individually, and then as a couple, very publicly (and right now, too publicly).  
We have been trying to figure out how best to love each other for twelve years.  It is fair to say that this relationship has been the hardest, but also the most rewarding, collaboration of our lives. 
Living in lockdown is hard. Working on a marriage, as everyone married knows, is also hard. And we are very aware there are thousands, probably millions of people who have been dealing with their own versions of problems like ours over the last few months ��� and many face situations that are far worse.
We will sort out our marriage in private, which is where things like this are best sorted. We're working together to try and do this better. We care about  each other so much, and we have a small boy we love and delight in, and those are reasons enough to work together to fix things. 
So that's what's going on. It's not as much fun or as interesting as the newsfeed headlines made it seem.
For anyone who felt the urge to choose sides on this, trust us, there really aren't any sides to be  taken: we are on our side, and we're on Ash's side, and we hope you are too.

None of us know what the future is going to look and feel like, right now, and that's scary. We need to be able to have each other���s backs.  So please, if you can, have our backs, and we will do our best to have yours. 
And to the vast majority of people out there who have been kind and sane and supportive to both of us, and to each other,  thank you, we love you and appreciate it, and you, so very much.

Peace, and definitely love,

Neil and Amanda








Labels:  married life, Ash, Life in lockdown, amanda palmer