The brother of the Princess of Wales has revealed he was once moments away from taking his own life, before he was saved by his dog.
James Middleton had previously said that depression, from which he suffers, is “cancer of the mind”. In his soon-to-be-released memoir he claimed that if it wasn’t for his dog Ella he’d have succumbed to it.
In an extract from his book ‘Meet Ella’ released in the Daily Mail, the 37-year-old wrote that around 2am on a night in November 2017 he felt that life was “no longer worth living”.
He wrote that he was unable to sleep or eat in the run-up to his mental health crisis.
In the days before contemplating suicide, Mr Middleton said that he totally isolated himself from others. “I hide behind a double-locked door, unreachable”, he said.
He wrote that during the fateful night where he almost ended it all, Mr Middleton contemplated jumping from the roof of his building.
In the Daily Mail extract, he wrote that he wanted to “escape from myself”, adding that: “Dark thoughts crowd in on me. What can I do to make them stop? I think about jumping from the rooftop. Who would find me? A passing taxi-driver? A neighbour?”
He explained that it was when he looked back down into his flat through the sky light, that he saw Ella’s “gentle eyes looking back up at me.”
Her soft features were enough to save him, he wrote. “Her brown eyes are still staring intently at me, soulful and pleading, and as my gaze locks on hers again, my brain quietens,” he wrote.
Mr Middleton said it was worrying about how Ella would cope if he took his own life that convinced him not to.
He wrote: “In that instant I know I will not jump. What would happen to Ella if I died? How long would she wait alone in the flat for someone to find her?”
Summing up the critical role his dog played, he wrote: “She is the reason I do not take that fatal leap. She is Ella, the dog who saved my life.”
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