Taraji P. Henson Reveals She Contemplated Suicide During The Pandemic
Taraji P. Henson is opening up about her past thoughts of suicide during her Facebook Watch series, Peace of Mind with Taraji.
The 50-year-old Empire actress talked about her dark moment where she didn’t get out of bed for days during the earlier days of the pandemic.
“For a couple of days, I couldn’t get out of the bed, I didn’t care. That’s not me,” Taraji said while talking with Tracie Jade and licensed psychologist Dr. LaShonda Green. “Then, I started having thoughts about ending it. ‘I could go in there right now, and just end it all.’”
“I felt myself withdrawing. People were calling me, I wasn’t responding. I just didn’t care. Finally, I’m talking to one of my girlfriends and I knew, I was smart enough to say, ‘I have to say it,’” Taraji went on, before admitting that she did feel ashamed for thinking of it. “I was like, I don’t want them to think I’m crazy. I don’t want them to, you know, obsess over me or think they gotta come and sit on me.”
“So one day I just blurted it out, to my girlfriend. She called me in the morning and I was like, ‘You know I thought about killing myself last night,’” she continued. “‘Oh my god, I feel so much better. I’m not gonna do it now.’”
Taraji said that opening up to someone helped her let go of those feelings.
“For me, I’m no professional, but I felt like, if I don’t say it, it becomes a plan,” she said. “And what scared me, is that I did it two nights in a row. And the thoughts kept coming. Now I started think about how. At first, it was like, I don’t want to be here. And then I started thinking about going and getting the gun. And that’s why when I woke up the next morning, and I blurted it out. Because I felt like after a while it was going to take over me and it was going to become a plan because that’s how strong my brain is.”
Last month, Taraji showed off just how good she was feeling now as she twerked on stage as host for the 2020 American Music Awards.