Prince Harry: Meghan Didn’t Act On Suicidal Thoughts Due To Concern For Him
Prince Harry revealed to Oprah Winfrey that Meghan Markle considered suicide; she didn’t do, though, due to concern for him “losing another woman in my life,” the Daily Mail reports.
In Harry and Oprah’s new docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, they discuss mental health and emotional well-being while opening up about their own mental health journeys and struggles — Harry opened up about the night Meghan told him she was suicidal.
The episode showed footage of Harry and Meghan sitting together as the lights went down at the Royal Albert Hall in London during an event two years ago before she started crying. The couple was married for less than a year at the time and she was pregnant with their son Archie when, in January 2019, she told him she was deeply depressed.
Meghan first revealed the trauma of that night in her March interview with Oprah.
Harry said in the episode, “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 to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby.”
Harry recounts that Markle’s biggest concern that kept her up at night was the fear of losing her clarity of thought. “She hadn’t ‘lost it’,” Harry said. “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 night, these thoughts woke her up.”
When Meghan revealed these thoughts to her husband, he said he didn’t know the proper way to handle it. “I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with them,” Harry said. “And of course, 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 to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event. Then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay. There wasn’t an option to say, ‘You know what, tonight, we’re not going to go’ because just imagine the stories that come from that.”
Harry said that was the night he had a revelation, knowing that things couldn’t continue the way they were going. When lights went down, Meghan started crying. Harry felt sorry for her as they held hands, yet angry at himself for the situation they were in. “I was ashamed that it got this bad. I was ashamed to go to my family,” Harry said. “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. I then had a son who I’d far rather be solely focused on, rather than every time I look into his eyes, wondering whether my wife is going to end up like my mother and I’m going to have to look after him myself.”
The Me You Can’t See was released on Apple TV+ yesterday, with Prince Harry telling Oprah he feared “history repeating itself” after he began dating Markle, and was reminded of his mother being pursued to her death while she was dating “someone who wasn’t white.”
Diana, the princess of Wales, died in August 1997 alongside Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, who she had been dating for several months. Harry said he felt there were parallels in their stories when he followed in his mother’s footsteps and began dating a person of color. “My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white,” he said. “And now look what’s happened. It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.”
Watch the trailer for The Me You Can’t See below:
