NEED TO KNOW
- Chris Appleton opened up about “one of the darkest nights” of his life on the Aug. 6 episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast
- The celebrity hairstylist shared his past with suicidal thoughts and how they related to his sexuality
- “I hope other people watching this can maybe feel heard or seen and find the help they need,” he said
Chris Appleton is looking back on a dark time in his life.
In a new interview with On Purpose, a podcast by Jay Shetty, the 42-year-old celebrity hairstylist opened up about having suicidal ideations in the past. For him, the burden of being a gay father would be too much for his two kids to bear.
“I felt like it would be better for them to have a dad that was dead than a dad that was gay. It’s not something I’ve ever spoken about,” Appleton said in the Wednesday, Aug. 6 episode, which coincided with the announcement of his debut book, Your Roots Don’t Define You.
The U.K. native shares two children — son Billy, 22, and daughter Kitty-blu, 20 — with his former partner Katie Katon.
Appleton told Shetty, 37, that Katon was the first to know, and he allowed her time to grieve the end of their relationship. Earlier in the interview, he said that despite them being together for approximately a decade, they were never married.
Coming out to Katon was difficult, “Because I loved her, I really loved her, and I didn’t want to be gay. I didn’t want to be different,” Appleton said.
“But the hardest part was telling my kids,” Appleton said, admitting that sharing his story was something he never thought he’d do. “I feel ready to talk to people because I feel like, hopefully it will help someone else that’s going through a difficult time.”
He called the idea of his children being tormented because of his sexual preference “really painful” and made him feel “like a disease.”
“I felt like it was like a cancer. I wanted to clear it out of me,” he continued, recalling wanting to be “a normal dad for them.”
Katon’s mother was the one who delivered the news to the former couple’s kids, who were around 6 and 8 at the time, because it was too much for Appleton to share.
“All of a sudden, I just felt like I’d just messed their life up, and I felt like I’d failed as a dad because my job was to protect them and if anyone ever hurt them, I would protect them. But I was the one [who] hurt them, and I couldn’t understand that,” he said.
After receiving questions from his son, Appleton said he “shut down and I left” because he “felt so much shame.”
Appleton went for a long drive that lasted “for a couple of hours” and brought painkillers with him.
“I brought a bottle of alcohol and I checked myself into a hotel, and the whole time I had a picture of the kids. It was like this computer case it had and them smiling on it. They wrote a message on it. It was silly, it was just a little computer case, but I was just holding it the whole time,” he said.
After drinking the pills mixed with the alcohol, he said, “I closed my eyes and I just thought, this is it. This is it. I won’t hurt anyone anymore… and maybe I’ll stop hurting too.”
Appleton said the rest was “a blur,” but he remembered hearing sirens and waking up in a hospital.
“And something changed then, and it was really powerful because I realized I couldn’t hate myself any more than I had, and I couldn’t try and stop being gay anymore,” he said, later adding, “I just remember thinking, ‘Well, what about if I just surrender? What about if I’m just gay and I just be that?’”
He added, “And in that moment, something changed. I decided to live.” Appleton said he thought of his eight-year-old self and allowed him to be seen.
“So, although it was one of the darkest nights of my life, I think it was a turning point. And like I say, it’s not something I take lightly,” Appleton said. “I think it’s not something I’ve ever spoken about. But I hope other people in watching this can maybe feel heard or seen and find the help they need, or even maybe it’s a parent that’s struggling and understanding their child to understand how dark it can be when you’re left in silence and when you don’t get to express who you truly are, or even if it’s the kid that did the bullying at school, and see how painful it can really be for someone.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.
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