Now that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have stepped away from royal life and are committed to being more candid for their own mental wellbeing, the intimate things they’ve revealed about their lives in the palace continue to be both shocking and heartbreaking.
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The couple had previously opened up about Meghan’s struggles with suicidal thoughts during their interview with Oprah earlier this year, but as part of the ongoing mental health docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, Harry got even more specific.
“The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her, our baby,” he said.
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Harry was also open about how his mother’s tragic death in 1997, when he was just 12 years old, traumatized him for years to come. He turned to drugs and alcohol to deal with life throughout his 20s and 30s, and considers the four years prior to meeting Meghan to be some of the darkest he’s experienced.
“It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life,” he said. “Like the list is growing, and it all comes back to the same people, the same business model — the same industry.”
Meghan told him about her suicidal thoughts shortly before a charity event in January of 2019, and Harry recounts how they had no choice but to power through and attend the event anyway, and admits that he now feels “somewhat ashamed” of how he handled the revelation in the immediate aftermath.
“Because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle, and then we had to get changed and had to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event and then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s OK,” he said.
Sure enough, photos taken from that night show the royal couple putting up appearances, despite everything.
But, Harry stresses, “Meghan was struggling.”
“While my wife and I were in those chairs, gripping each other’s hand, the moment the lights go down, Meghan starts crying,” he recalls. “I was ashamed that it got this bad. I was ashamed to go to my family. Because to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to, I know that I’m not gonna get from my family what I need.”
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Of his wife’s suicidal thoughts, Harry adds, “The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought. She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of the night, these thoughts woke her up.”
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. You can also text TALK to 741741 for free, anonymous 24/7 crisis support in the US from the Crisis Text Line.
*First Published: May 21, 2021, 7:32 am
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