Cara Delevingne felt like she was on a "rollercoaster to hell" during her teenage years and wanted her life to end.
Cara Delevingne
The 25-year-old model suffered from depression during her younger years and has now admitted she "hated" herself so much she "didn't want to be alive anymore" at times, but now wishes she could tell her younger self everything would be OK.
She said: "I hated myself for being depressed, I hated feeling depressed, I hated feeling. I was very good at disassociating from emotion completely. And all the time I was second-guessing myself, saying something and then hating myself for saying it. I didn't understand what was happening apart from the fact that I didn't want to be alive anymore.
"I wish I could have given myself a hug. I wish I'd known that I was still in there somewhere, that I wasn't my own worst enemy, that I wasn't trapped. That if you can hold on for dear life - because being a teenager can feel like you're on a rollercoaster to hell, that's what it honestly felt like to me - you can get through it."
Cara has admitted she used to feel as though she had "something dark within [her]" which she couldn't seem to rid herself of, and it didn't help matters when bullies would brand her as a boy because she had short hair.
She said: "When I tried to talk to people about it, they wouldn't want to understand. So many of my friends would say: 'How can you feel like that?' and, 'But you're so lucky,' and I'd be like, 'I know, trust me, I know. I know I'm the luckiest girl in the world, I understand all of these things, and I wish I could appreciate it. There is just something dark within me I cannot seem to shake.' "
"That whole thing of being called frigid, and being flat-chested ... I felt alienated and alone, because I was like, 'What's wrong with me?' I always wanted people to love me, so I never got angry with them; I turned my anger on to myself.
"Instead of using [my] sword and shield [to protect myself], I just put my shield up and stabbed myself.
"If I wore the clothes that I liked, with my short hair, everyone would think that I was a boy. I hated it. Even though I looked like a boy and acted like a boy, I wasn't a boy."
Cara - who has been single since she split from St Vincent in September 2016 - admits she has "relied too much on love" in the past but is now "happy" because she is comfortable with herself.
Speaking to Net-A-Porter's digital magazine The Edit, she added: "I know it sounds really stupid, but I relied too much on love, too much on other people to make me happy, and I needed to learn to be happy by myself. So now I can be by myself, I can be happy. It took me a long time."
Read the full interview with Cara at www.net-a-porter.com/magazine.
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