Caitlyn Jenner revealed that she once contemplated suicide during her transition when she sat down with Bill Simmons for a Wednesday, August 3, interview on HBO’s Any Given Wednesday.
The 66-year-old I Am Cait star — formerly known as Bruce — told Simmons, 46, that she thought about taking her own life shortly after having her Adam’s apple surgically shaved, a part of her body she “always hated.” When a paparazzo captured shots of Jenner leaving the doctor’s office after the procedure in February 2014, the former Olympian said she nearly lost it.
“I could not sleep that night. I’m up at 3 a.m. walking up and down my hallway, thinking, Damn, all this s–t is going to come out tomorrow and it’s going to be horrible,” she recounted. “And I said, ‘You know what? Easy way. Go in the other room. You got a gun. Let’s just end it right here.’”
The TV personality — who has been open about her brush with suicide with friends and family — added that the whole experience was one of the worst moments in her life.
“That’s, like, the easy way out. No more pain, no more nothing. I don’t have to deal with the tabloids any longer,” she said. “I don’t have to deal with any of this. And that was probably the lowest I’ve ever gotten.”
However, when Jenner awoke the next morning, she decided to clear her mind by going for a walk around her Malibu neighborhood.
“Wasn’t that, like, the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? I thought, What a terrible way to end your life’s story! I don’t want my story to end that way, on a negative note,” she shared. “That was the beginning of me turning my thinking around to say, ‘OK, I think I can do this.’”
The LGBT advocate, who made her debut as Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair in June 2015, told Simmons that she has found a new lease on life in the last year and a half.
“Going through this, I have renewed my excitement for life,” she tearfully explained of being able to “live authentically.” “My life today is so interesting, so simple. It really is so simple.”
