James Middleton has opened up about a very dark time in his life regarding his mental health. In an excerpt published by the Daily Mail on September 14 from his upcoming memoir, Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life, the 37-year-old brother of Kate Middleton detailed a time when he was “suicidal” and unable to be reached by his family.
“I contemplate ways of dying so I can get off the giddy roller-coaster that is sending me to the brink of madness,” the excerpt reads. “I cannot sleep because my mind is in tumult.” James’ book is set to be published in the United States on September 24.
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He talked about his mental state during that time.
“All the colour has leached out of my life. I exist in a black and white world empty of emotion and feeling. I am perpetually agitated,” the excerpt from the Daily Mail reads. “If I go anywhere – to work, to a party, to the cinema – I feel compelled to leave. Yet once I do, I am still lost, aimless; pacing purposelessly. There is no respite from this constant restlessness. It is not so much a feeling as an absence of feelings.
“I have no purpose or direction. I cannot feel pleasure, excitement or anticipation,” it continues. “There is a constant noise in my head like a radio that cannot be tuned; an unnerving crackle and buzz. The moment I find the delicate balance and the noise eases, the tiniest flinch of a muscle will set it off again. I cannot escape it.”
James says he pushed his family away.
Continuing in the book, James talked more about not believing there was a reason for him to live anymore. “The insomnia is dizzying. I am utterly exhausted. I feel misunderstood; a complete failure. I wouldn’t wish the sense of worthlessness and desperation, the isolation and loneliness, on my worst enemy. I think I’m going crazy,” he writes.
“Yet I know I am privileged; fortunate, too, to have a loving and close-knit family — Mum and Dad, my sisters Catherine and Pippa, their husbands William and James — but I push them all away. I do not answer their phone calls. Emails remain ignored. Invitations to visit go unheeded. I hide behind a double-locked door, unreachable.”
He reached a low point in 2017.
James detailed reaching one of his lowest points in November 2017 when he contemplated jumping off a rooftop of a building in London.”I wonder, if I jump, could it possibly be construed as a tragic accident? That way my family, although they would grieve desperately, would be spared the added torture of knowing that I had ended my life by suicide,” he wrote. But his miracle was right below him.
A dog 'saved' his life.
“As I pace, I look down through the skylight and see my spaniel Ella’s gentle eyes looking back up at me. Like me, she has been wakeful all night. She senses my strange, agitated state of mind,” James wrote of his late dog, who died in January 2023. He says that she was “imploring me with her eyes to come down” while he thought about what it would be like if he and the dog didn’t have each other.
What made him climb down from the roof was that after about an hour of him being up there, Ella had “not moved” from her post below. “I haul myself back from the brink, slowly climb down the ladder and stroke Ella’s silky head. She is the reason I do not take that fatal leap. She is Ella, the dog who saved my life.”
There have been positive responses building up to his book release.
Many people have shared their excitement to read the book, as well as thanked James’ for his vulnerability in writing it. “Thank you for sharing your story, James. It helps us all,” one user commented. “Thank you for sharing your story. It’s so important and we need to hear it,” another person wrote. “My Violet saved my life and I lost her 5 years ago. Pet grief and loss is excruciating. I find comfort in giving back and sharing her story.”
Someone else wrote, “Congratulations, James! May your book on Ella be an inspiration to many who struggle with clinical depression and how your Ella helped you through some dark times, with her unconditional love for 15 years. What a wonderful way to honour your faithful companion of so many years!🌹🙏.”
