Hayley Williams pens strong essay reflecting on her mental health and tumultuous marriage
Hayley Williams opens up about her mental health and troublesome marriage in her latest essay for Paper magazine.
It took the singer a tumultuous time with her band Paramore to realize that she was struggling with her mental health and that her marriage was going haywire.
The Grammy Award winner described the summer of 2015 as a time where she felt like a little girl twirling in the street when suddenly a piano came crashing down on her. As she described, she had newly moved, was engaged with a wedding approaching and anticipated becoming a mom and making more music.
"Everything was finally going to be perfect and I was going to live happily ever after— Oh," she candidly wrote.
“I woke up from that crash with one less bandmate… another fight about money and who wrote what songs. And I had a wedding ring on, despite breaking off the engagement only months before,” the 29-year-old powerfully pens an essay.
“A lot happened within a short time. But then I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t laugh … for a long time.” Williams and Chad Gilbert announced their separation last summer.
Williams’, guitarist Taylor York, would send her music to write lyrics for, but she found herself unable to do so, saying everything she came up with sounded “like someone dead in the eyes.”
The realization that something was not right dawned on her when writing dark lyrics such as “You want forgiveness but I can’t give you that."
"I didn't know the person behind those words. Probably because I never before allowed her to come out and say how she really felt. I never cared to get to know her," she described in the essay. “But writing kept me alive. Forced me to be honest … It helped me understand that emotional wellness and physical health are actually related,” she wrote.
“It helped me realize that I shouldn’t have ever married my ex [New Found Glory lead guitarist Chad Gilbert] and that love is not something we can just extract from one other.”
After Paramore released its latest album, “After Laughter,” Williams found herself getting back in a healthy headspace after years of “torment.”
“I’m alive to both pain and joy now. I have my old laugh back, as my mom says,” she shared. “The one that takes over my body and sends me out of myself for a few seconds. And only a couple years ago, I had hoped I’d die.”