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Paramore’s Hayley Williams Reveals She Quit the Band While Battling Depression: ‘I Just Was Done’

Hayley Williams has had her share of hard times.

The 28-year-old Paramore frontwoman opened up about her struggle with depression and quitting the GRAMMY-winning rock band in 2015.

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In an intimate interview with Fader, Williams revealed that for the past couple of years she has been battling depression, "punctuated by times in which she stayed in bed all day watching old episodes of The Office." The "Misery Business" singer shared that at times, it got so bad that she thought about death and ultimately sought the help of a therapist.

"For the first time in my life, there wasn't a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel," she revealed. "I thought, 'I just wish everything would stop.' It wasn't in the sense of, I'm going to take my life. It was just hopelessness. Like, 'What's the point?' I don't think I understood how dangerous hopelessness is. Everything hurts."

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Williams joined Paramore at the age of 15 and for over a decade has been on many ups and downs. In 2015, she quietly quit the band for a period of time after she was "feeling exhausted" and overthinking her career.

"I just was done," Williams expressed. "I thought, 'There's gotta be something else that I'm good at in my life. Maybe it's time for me to go find that.'"

But Williams kept writing and channeling her pain into her songs, which eventually became part of Paramore's new album, After Laughter. To this day she still struggles with people asking her about the band's drama, legal issues and members leaving the band, adding, "I'm still going through a lot of those things. Like, I'm not really … over this album."

For more on Williams, watch below.

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