Crossing the Blues

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Oprah Winfrey Tried to Kill Herself When She Was Pregnant

 Appearing as the first guest on Piers Morgan's CNN new show, Oprah Winfrey made a shocking confession about how she considered to take her own life and her baby's when she was pregnant at the age of 14. "I felt before that baby was born I was going to have to kill myself," she said.

Of the things she tried to do to sabotage the pregnancy, Oprah revealed, "I did stupid things like drinking detergent and all that kind of crazy stuff that you do when you're trying to get attention when you're really just trying to cry for help." However, she never came close to killing herself.

Defending her actions, she stated, "This is my 14-year-old self. I don't even
know what I thought the plan was going to be. ... You're having a baby out of wedlock, your life is over." So when the baby died, the media mogul "felt nothing but relief", and she saw it as her second chance.

"So I went back to school, and nobody knew. Because had anybody known at that time, I wouldn't have been able to be head of student council. I wouldn't have been able to be speaking champion in forensics. ... I wouldn't have been chosen as one of the two teenagers in the state of Tennessee to go to the White House conference on youth. None of those things would have happened, and the entire trajectory of my life would have been different."

Beside talking about her suicidal thoughts during the pregnancy, Oprah also discussed her love life. Stating she only has been in love with three people in her life, she said that two of them broke her heart. Without giving any names, she revealed about having a safety box full of old love letters from those relationships.

Speaking of Stedman Graham, her long-term partner who she has been with for 25 years, she recalled when she first realized her love for the man. "I had been betrayed by somebody in my family who had gone to the tabloids and for $20,000 had sold me out ... Stedman came into the room with tears in his eyes and said 'the story is out, I have a copy if it' and said 'I'm really sorry you don't deserve this.' It was that moment [when I knew I loved him]," she gushed.

Still, she could never see herself tying the knot with Stedman. "I am not the marrying kind," she reasoned. "I am a different kind of woman in that I am pretty assured that had I married I wouldn't have remained married because it takes a very different person to put up with all this [her life in the spotlight]."