SINÉAD'S ANGUISH
Singer suicidal and living at a motel in Jersey
Sinéad O’Connor has been reduced to living out of a motel room “in the arse end of New Jersey’’ — desperately struggling to stay alive as she battles mental illness, she admitted in a disturbing Facebook video.
“I’m all by myself, and there’s absolutely nobody in my life except my doctor, my psychiatrist, the sweetest man on Earth, who says I’m his hero, and that’s about the f- -king only thing keeping me alive at the moment, that I’m his bloody hero. . . . And that’s kind of pathetic,” the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer rambled in a video posted to her account Thursday.
Sitting on a messy motel bed with cheap artwork of the New York City skyline behind her, the 50-year-old Irish songstress admitted, “I’m fighting and fighting and fighting . . . to stay alive every day.
“For two years, my entire life has revolved around just not dying, and that’s not just living,” O’Connor said, with her hair still in its trademark buzz cut.
“And I’m not going to die, I’m not going to die, but still,” she said, breaking down.
“I am now living in a Travelodge motel in the arse end of New Jersey,” she said, posting its South Hackensack address a day later.
“I want everyone to know what it’s like.
“Mental illness, it’s like drugs, it doesn’t give a s- -t who you are, and equally what’s worse, it’s the stigma, it doesn’t give a s- -t who you are.
“And suddenly all the people that are supposed to be loving you and taking care of you are treating you like s- -t.’’
O’Connor, who has previously said she tried to commit suicide three times, added that if not for her four children, she wouldn’t be around anymore.
Married four times, the singer griped about the custody battles she has had with her exes.
And she said she had been hospitalized for kidney stones recently.
Gifted with a haunting voice, O’Connor broke into the international spotlight with her version of the Prince tune “Nothing Compares 2 U’’ in 1990.
She shaved her head to protest the treatment of women, famously ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992 and was ordained a priest by a splinter Catholic group.
A woman who told The Post that she has been staying at the Travelodge with her boyfriend for the past month said O’Connor had been at the motel for more than a week.
The woman said that when she first spotted the singer, she told her boyfriend, “That looks like an old Sinéad O’Connor!
“She had a hospital band on her wrist,’’ the woman recalled.
She said O’Connor “kept to herself ” but “left her door wide open all week except at night.
“She would go to the Pepsi machine,” the woman said.
The motel guest said she hadn’t seen O’Connor since Friday, when a man came to see her, and the pair left.
She pointed to what she said was O’Connor’s car in the parking lot.
A source who once collaborated with O’Connor told The Post, “Whatever you think of Sinéad, she’s showing courage in laying bare her problems and shedding light on the fight millions have with depression.
“I hope she stays with us. She may save someone else’s life in the process.”