Tyler Perry, who survived child sexual abuse and grew into a world-renowned filmmaker, openly reflected on his past suicide attempts in the wake of Stephen “tWitch” Boss’ recent death. The 53-year-old spoke about those instances in an Instagram video posted Wednesday.
“I just want to take you back to a time in my life when I tried to commit suicide a couple of times because it was so dark I didn’t think it would get any better,” said Perry, adding that he had met Boss several times and described him as “always full of life” and “such a light.”
Perry continued: “I had endured so much pain, so much abuse, sexual abuse. It was all so hard to just move through that I thought the only way to make this better, this pain go away is to end my life. Had any of those attempts happened, I would have missed the best part of my life.”
Perry previously told Oprah Winfrey that his father once beat him so hard that he was unconscious for three days. He was also sexually abused as a child by a neighbor and molested by an adult male nurse. At the end of his video, he also shared the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number as he urged others to seek help.
“What I realize now, looking back on all those dark times, is sometimes the pain is a buy-in,” said Perry. “I know that’s hard to understand. Not all the time, sometimes, the pain is a buy-in. That’s the way I had to learn to look at it to get through it.”
“What I mean by that is, all that pain, all of that hell, all of that struggle, if I had given up, if I had stopped, I wouldn’t have seen the better part of my life,” he continued. “So I was buying into something. I was paying for something. I know that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.”
Perry, who became a multitalented actor, writer, director and producer, recently won a renowned Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award — an Oscar statuette from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences — and reportedly received a standing ovation for his sprawling career.
Boss, whose breakout performance on “So You Think You Can Dance” led to a permanent DJ job on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in 2014, was found dead from a gunshot wound at a Los Angeles motel/hotel on Tuesday. He left behind his wife, Allison Holker, and three children.
“Don’t let the darkness stop you from getting to this incredible place of light,” Perry concluded his video. “Let’s end this new year loving us, loving on each other, encouraging ourselves because this is gonna take that from within. God bless you. Rest in peace, tWitch.”