Before Demi Lovato ever appeared on Disney’s Camp Rock or became a judge on FOX’s The X Factor, she played the role of Angela on Barney & Friends. The 20-year-old singer has been very open about her struggles dealing with depression, a bipolar disorder and an eating disorder. Now Lovato has revealed in a new interview with Cosmopolitan Magazine that she thought about suicide at a very young age.
“At the time, I was just so grateful to be on TV, but I was also really struggling,” Lovato told Cosmopolitan Magazine in its upcoming August issue.
“Looking back, there was a connection, probably between any kid who’s ever sang that song to Barney, a little place in a child’s heart, a void, that could be filled. And maybe Barney fills it. Even before Barney, I was suicidal. I was seven. With Barney, I guess subliminally, I did have a relationship with this figure that was saving my life in a way.”
Two years ago the X Factor judge opened up to ABC New’s Robin Roberts that she began cutting herself at the age of 11.
“It was a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body,” she told Roberts in a 2011 interview. “I was matching the inside to the outside. And there were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn’t know what to do. The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release on myself.”
Now it seems that talking about her issues has helped Lovato overcome her struggles.
“I’ve talked about being bullied and the years of being a teenager, but I went through things when I was younger that I’ve never talked about that probably caused me to turn out the way I ended up turning out.”
She writes about one of the memories of her childhood that haunts her the most in her song “Warrior.” The song goes, “There’s a part of me I can’t get back/ A little girl grew up too fast/ All it took was once, I’ll never be the same/ Now I’m taking back my life today.”
“My family knows what it’s about,” Lovato has said about the song. “When I’m ready to open up that subject with the outside world, then I’ll be free to talk about it. But right now, it’s kind of one of those things where the lyrics speak for me. It’s all in the song.”
