After pandemic delays, Lady Gaga is 'so grateful' to get her Chromatica Ball started

Lady Gaga is ready to reunite with her Little Monsters after two years of pandemic delays.

"There was a time I thought I'd never be on stage again. I was so sad I couldn't even dream anything but a painful nightmare," the Grammy-winning singer tweeted Friday. "I've overcome my nightmare with love, support, trust, truth, bravery, talent and dedication."

Gaga's candid post about her pandemic-prompted worries and excitement about performing comes two days before she's set to kick off her long-awaited Chromatica Ball tour in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The tour was supposed to begin in the summer of 2020, but was postponed to 2021 due to the global health crisis. In 2021, Chromatica Ball was postponed again, to 2022, with Gaga again citing safety concerns.

"While some parts of the world are moving quickly to open up, others are not yet ready," she wrote last June in an email to ticketholders.

Now Chromatica Ball is finally just around the corner and Gaga is "so grateful."

"I'll see you in BABYLON #ChromaticaBall," she said in her Friday tweet.

The Chromatica Ball stops in cities including Stockholm, Paris and Boston. Mother Monster will come to Los Angeles' own Dodger Stadium on Sept. 10.

The upcoming world tour marks the "House of Gucci" actor's first in four years. She last toured in 2018 for the Joanne World Tour.

While the pandemic put a two-year damper on Gaga's world tour plans, those years have been chock-full of other opportunities.

In 2020, she performed "Rain on Me" alongside Ariana Grande at the MTV VMAs, where she took home the ceremony's Artist of the Year honor. In 2021, she starred as Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott's buzzy "House of Gucci." Then in May, she brought her musical talents to "Top Gun: Maverick" with the song "Hold My Hand."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.