Craig Lucas on coming out
The Voice winner Craig Lucas reveals his struggle with depression and how he finally plucked up the courage to come out
IT WAS like a tornado had hit him. Craig Lucas felt completely dazed – he’d just been announced as the winner of The Voice SA. How had this happened? But as he stood on stage struggling to take it all in he knew one thing for sure: his life would never be the same again. And he was right. With winnings of a quarter of a million rand he was able to quit his nine-to-five government job to focus on making music. His songs topped the charts and he had a throng of frenzied fans following his every move on social media.
Craig (25) was living the dream but what nobody realised was that inside he was dying a slow death. Fame came with a high price tag because it meant having to hide the fact he was gay from the world. He was convinced that if people knew the truth they wouldn’t listen to his music so he went back into the closet and kept this side of his life a secret. But all the lies left him feeling desperately unhappy.
“I chose to be miserable,” he tells us when we meet up in a quiet coffee shop in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront.
But he’s in a much better headspace now, he adds, and it’s all because he chose to be honest.
A week before our interview he plucked up every bit of courage he had and penned a coming-out letter, which he shared on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, in which he also revealed heartrending details about his ongoing battle with depression.
And you can see the truth has set him free. As he chats to us he looks as if he’s had the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders.
Craig tells us in recent days he’s received thousands of messages, most of which have been overwhelmingly supportive.
“I have people asking for advice, telling me they’re going through the same thing and that my story gives them a little bit of hope.”
His coach and mentor on The Voice, singer Kahn Morbee, as well as several other artists and radio presenters, also reached out to offer their support. They know how much courage it took.
Although British singer Sam Smith and Spud actor Troye Sivan both came out amid much publicity Craig says he felt as if he was taking a big gamble because no one in South Africa has really done this before.
“The market is so small that people are scared to do anything that will lose them a bit of support,” he says.
It was a risk – but Craig is happy he took it.
ASTUNNING realisation hit him like a lightning bolt in 2011. Sitting in a bar, it dawned on him he was in love with his best friend. He spent the following four years in a “perpetual state of war” with himself. Having grown up in the conservative community of Elsies River in Cape Town, he knew his sexuality would be hard for his family to accept. So he turned to alcohol and recreational drugs as a coping mechanism and sank deeper into depression with each passing day.
It got so bad that it almost drove him to suicide. Early in 2016 he seriously considered taking his own life by jumping from a moving train.
Craig knew he had to do something about his life. That same day he went to lay beside his mother, Jennifer, on her bed and told her everything – how he was in love with a man.
She was shocked. How was it possible when her son had been in a relationship with a woman just a year earlier?
“We were both sobbing. She asked if I didn’t want to go for therapy,” he says.
But Craig knew there was no going back. That same day he wrote his first open letter, which he shared with a much smaller following on his personal social media pages.
He says it was a relief to be free of his secret. A month later he and his boyfriend started dating.
Then came The Voice last year – and Craig found himself back in the closet. Friends warned him it was better not to mention his sexual orientation because if people knew, there was a chance they might not vote for him.
Craig followed their advice. And after winning the show’s second season he felt compelled to continue the lie even though it made him miserable. He says his mother, older brother Warren and boyfriend, who he prefers not to name, bore the brunt of his misery.
“During radio interviews they’d ask me about Smother [off his album, Restless], which is obviously a song about relationships. And I’d be like, ‘No, I’m single. I wish I were in a relationship’. And he’d be listening at home. It hurt him but he’d be so understanding.”
The pair are still together, although Craig says their hush-hush relationship hit a rough patch this year – and that’s finally what prompted him to write his letter.
“I became a horrible person to those closest to me. It was either I wrote this letter, or I died.”
Craig reveals he’d stay home for days on end, hiding from the world.
“I’d lie in bed every day and my house would be filthy because I wouldn’t move.”
Then one day while scrolling through his Facebook feed he came across the letter he’d posted two years ago. In that moment he realised he’d morphed back into the same depressed and closeted person he was two years before.
“I felt so stupid for not seeing this was what I was going through.”
On 4 September he fired up his laptop and shared his epiphany with those closest to him.
“They were a little upset that I’d been going through all of this without their knowing.”
He originally had no intention of posting it to social media but then it struck him that perhaps repeating the route he’d taken two years ago was the best way to get it out in the open.
But Craig wasn’t completely sure yet – so he turned to curry.
“Curry solves everything!” he says, laughing. “I considered everything while I made a nice pot of lamb curry. Then I ate it and the curry said to post it!”
Although it’s a relief to be out of the closet he still has to confront his ongoing battle with depression.
Craig says it previously never crossed his mind to seek medical treatment.
“In coloured communities depression isn’t discussed. You’re told to go to church and get yourself together or you’re asked why you’re so moody. This letter was my cry for help.”
His father also suffered from depression and in a traumatic event shot himself in front of his wife when Craig was three.
“My father’s death made suicide an option. If he could, why couldn’t I?”
Craig says the thing that always held him back was realising how suicide devastates the lives of the people left behind.
“I could never put my mom through that again. Realising that has been my saving grace.”
Several psychologists have reached out to him after his emotional post and the singer now plans on getting professional help.
“My brain was so cluttered [before coming out] but I can think straight now.”
He’s currently at work on a new album, which includes the track Freedom which was inspired by his coming-out letter.
“The best music is born of pain,” he says.
He chuckles as he recalls how some people complained that his first album was too sad.
“If you think that one was bad, get ready.”
‘It was either I wrote this, or I died’