MMA star Angela Lee details 2017 suicide attempt in an essay for The Players’ Tribune

By Sam Joseph, CNN

(CNN) — Mixed martial artist Angela Lee has written about trying to take her own life six years ago in a personal essay for The Players’ Tribune, while confirming that her sister Victoria died by suicide last year.

“My car crash in November 2017 was not an accident. It was a suicide attempt,” wrote Lee in her essay which was was published on The Players’ Tribune website.

“For the longest time, I blocked that reality out of my mind in order to ‘protect myself.’”

The current ONE Atomweight World Champion said she had “pushed [her] mind and body too far” due to the expectations surrounding her career and also making the weight for an upcoming fight.

“With ONE Championship’s hydration testing, you have to lower your weight gradually through dieting,” Lee explained. “But I started this fight camp the heaviest I’d ever been, and the weight wasn’t dropping anymore. My body was fighting against me, and I had run out of time.

“I had gotten to a place where making weight for that fight was the biggest thing in the world to me … I couldn’t stop thinking about the shame that would result if I wasn’t able to make the fight.

“Ultimately, I got to a point where I would rather take myself out of the equation than deal with what might come.”

Then aged 20, Lee attempted to injure herself at home before driving to a nearby mountainside road and intentionally crashing.

“I didn’t know where I was rolling — whether I’d gone over the cliff, or up in the air, or what. I just closed my eyes and let it happen. Everything was moving in slow motion for me at the time,” she added in her essay.

Lee says she was rescued and taken to hospital. She’s recovered physically, but she says that the mental scars remained for a long time.

Her husband, fellow MMA fighter Bruno Pucci, was the only person she initially told about her suicide attempt.

“I still felt very alone, in trying to deal with and process what happened,” she said.

“As much as Bruno loved me and wanted to help me, he just did not understand what I was going through.

“I felt fragile, shattered. I was broken, and I needed to heal and put back the pieces all by myself.”

The now 27-year-old said she focused on her breathing to help recover from the incident, finding happiness by spending time among nature.

Lee, who set up Fightstory earlier this year – a non-profit organization that “champions a global movement for mental and physical wellness” in combat sports – also revealed in her Players’ Tribune essay that her sister Victoria died by suicide in December.

Victoria, a rising star in MMA, was just 18 when she died.

Her sister’s suicide is what compelled Lee to create Fightstory and tell her story publicly for the first time.

“We want people to know that although you may feel lonely in your fight with mental health, you are not alone,” she said.

“If you are struggling right now, if you are in a dark place, if you are contemplating ending your life, let us be the ones to say, we understand. We know how you feel.

“Speaking up and asking for help is the first step to truly living life.”

The-CNN-Wire
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