Fantasia opens up about her suicide attempt

August was supposed to be Fantasia Barrino's comeback month. For three years, the American Idol winner and Broadway star had been working on her third album, and selecting tracks that spoke to how far she'd come in her troubled life. To outsiders, everything seemed to be on target for a successful late-August launch of her album, Back to Me. But behind the scenes, the 26-year-old singer, overloaded personally and professionally, said she felt like she wanted to "sleep forever."

In a lengthy interview, Fantasia opened up about her suicide attempt earlier this month and also talked about her first halting and painful steps towards recovery. "I always covered up everything so well," Fantasia said, sipping a glass of Malbec at a Beverly Hills hotel after taping Lopez Tonight last week.

"I'm always the bubbly life of the party. And for so long, I pushed and pushed and pushed. And, this day, I had no push in me." Before her overdose on August 9 grabbed headlines and lighted up the blogosphere, Fantasia barricaded herself inside a guest room in her Charlotte, N.C., house for three days — refusing to eat, drink or talk to anyone, even her mother, best friend and manager. The single mother couldn't even face her 9-year-old daughter, Zion, who was being looked after by a cousin.

For months, Fantasia had denied rumours that she was having an affair with a married man, Antwaun Cook, a T-Mobile salesman. But soon photos of the couple surfaced on gossip pages and Cook's wife, Paula, filed for divorce, saying her husband had made a sex tape with Fantasia.

The news didn't go over well in the culturally conservative Southern city. Strangers drove by her house at all hours. Her mother expressed her pain and disappointment. Fantasia feared another round of cruel judgments from the media. "At the time, I wasn't thinking about anybody," she said, tears welling in her eyes. "I was so numb. I was so out of it. I've never been to that place before. It was so scary. It was the darkest place that anybody would want to be."

It took a team of lawyers, trailed by cameras for the second season of her reality show Fantasia for Real — which premieres on September 19 — to wrest her from her hiding place. Because of the ongoing litigation, Fantasia would say little about her relationship with Cook, but she acknowledged that the two had had an on-again, off-again relationship for 11 months and that when they began dating she believed he was separated from his wife. The meeting with lawyers that morning sent Fantasia over the edge. On the way home, she recalls telling her manager, Brian Dickens, she felt as though she were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"And he just said what they always say, ‘You got it, Tasia. It's gonna be all right. You're strong. Blah blah blah... I didn't want to hear that any more. I'd been hearing that for years and you gotta understand, I don't have anybody to lean on. I'm the one — I'm the caretaker. I do everything."

Time for goodbyes

She wrote farewell letters to her three brothers, mother, and daughter. She also texted her manager and her best friend that she loved them. Then she took "a lot" of sleeping pills and an entire bottle of Bayer aspirin, and sat in her closet, staring at herself in a mirror. "I felt like it was never going to end for me," she said.

When she awoke, Fantasia was angry to find herself alive and in the hospital. Two days later she was discharged under the condition she undergo outpatient group therapy. (And at her countryside facility, she also met with a life coach.)

But just four days after her suicide attempt, another media frenzy erupted. This time, she had been photographed in a park near her house, filming scenes for her reality show with Cook.

Fans and critics alike were alarmed that she was already back at work and with the man at the centre of her latest woes.

When the Los Angeles Times asked Fantasia about it, she said those scenes had been filmed the week before she was hospitalised. Dickens, her manager, added that Fantasia's need for closure had surfaced in group therapy and that was the reason the singer had met with Cook. (That was the last time they saw each other, he noted.)

She said therapy is helping her cope with criticism and teaching her to how to make herself a priority. She plans to tour in November, something she's been dreaming about for years. In the meantime, she says she will continue to work on herself in therapy.

"I can make you this promise: I won't do that again," she said, fighting tears. "I gotta see my daughter walk across the stage and get her high school diploma and she's got to go to college. I got to see that! I've been a single mom for nine years. It's just me and her. There's so much I want to do. I can hang in." She paused and added, "I got it."