Fantasia Barrino didn't intend to emit a cry for help when she attempted suicideearlier this month. What she intended to do was kill herself.
Her sobering sentiments are revealed in an episode of VH1's Behind the Music, airing Tuesday night. It marks quite the rapid-fire turnaround — both for the TV show's production team and for the singer herself, who thankfully is no longer in such a dark place.
"I didn't have any fight in me," she says. "I didn't care about anything. I just wanted out. At that moment I wanted out. I wanted it to be over with — all of it, all of that s--t."
Fantasia also made it clear that the ordeal was no accidental overdose.
"I just sat in the closet and looked at the mirror and took all the pills in the bottle. I wanted to go to sleep and just be at peace. I knew exactly what I was doing. You can't accidentally take a whole bottle of pills."
As for what drove her into downing the bottle in the first place, the former American Idol champ said that she craved a break from being wronged, and thought that suicide was her only way out.
"I was tired of people doing me wrong, constantly, over and over again, dealing with my family — my father, dealing with men and their s--t — I was tired," she explained. "My head was hurting me. I was over it."
Nestled amongst those male issues was no doubt her very public relationship with Antwaun Cook. Fantasia was accused of having an affair with Cook by his wife Paula, who has since threatened to take legal action against the singer.
"When I met him, he was separated…wasn't living in his home," she said. "He didn't want to be back with his wife — that is what I was told."
The predicament was among the first things on her mind when she came to in the hospital.
"I remember waking up in the hospital [and thinking], 'It didn't work, I'm still here in this hellhole. Still here with all this drama going on.'"
Fantasia credits her nurse with, well, nursing her back to health, both physically and mentally.
"She told me what I needed to hear. And she looked at me and said, 'You gotta get up, and you've gotta get out of here, 'cause you haven't fulfilled your destiny.'
"I realized how people end up in the grave. Because that one moment of just breaking or feeling like I can't, I can't go on, it's too heavy. That was somewhere I don't ever want to go again."