Adele rarely opens up about her life outside of music as she's always been shy about the "celebrity" side of her career, allowing us to focus on her insane voice and nothing more.
However, she covers the December issue of Vanity Fair and lets her guard down a bit, opening up about motherhood, relationships and battling depression for a majority of her life.
"I have a very dark side. I'm very available to depression," she admitted to the publication. "I can slip in and out of it quite easily. It started when my granddad died, when I was about 10, and while I never had a suicidal thought, I have been in therapy, lots."
When her son, Angelo Konecki, was born, that struggle completely changed—but only after she "snapped out" of her postpartum depression.
It's hard to imagine someone like Adele—whose son is the center of her universe—to have ever battled postpartum depression, but even she admits that it can happen to any new mom in all different ways, and it's exactly why she's scared to have another baby.
"My knowledge of postpartum—or post-natal, as we call it in England—is that you don't want to be with your child; you're worried you might hurt your child; you're worried you weren't doing a good job," she said. "But I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate; I felt like I'd made the worst decision of my life."
She continued, "It can come in many different forms...You're constantly trying to make up for stuff when you're a mom."
Now, Angelo is her world and nothing comes in the way of that. Her entire schedule—both work and personal—revolves around him...but that doesn't affect her. "I don't mind, because of the love I feel for him," she admitted. "I don't care if I don't ever get to do anything for myself again."
In fact, she quit smoking and drinking because of her son.
"Having a hangover with a child is torture," she joked before getting serious. "Since I've had my baby, I'm not as carefree as I used to be. I'm scared of a lot of things now because I don't want to die; I want to be around for my kid. I'm very cautious."
She also admitted that fame played a big role in her decision to stop drinking, too.
"I used to love to be drunk, but as I got more famous I would wake up the next morning and think, 'What the f--k did I say and who the f--k did I say it to?'" she explained. "I can see from an outsider's perspective that I will never write songs as good as the ones that are on 21, but I'm not as indulgent as I was then, and I don't have time to fall apart like I did then."
She continued, "I was completely off my face writing that album, and a drunk tongue is an honest one. I would drink two bottles of wine, and I would chain-smoke. Then I'd write the lyrics down and the next morning think, 'F--k, that's quite good.'"
Similarly, Adele says her son is a big reason she can't ever see herself moving on from Angelo's father and her partner of five years, Simon Konecki.
"It's the most serious relationship I've ever been in; we've got a child together and we live together," she told Vanity Fair. "I have no desire to be with anyone in show business, because we all have egos. He's not threatened by any stage of my life that I'm going for, and that's an amazing thing."
She also admits that her 14-year age gap with Simon is a big reason why they work so well together.
"After releasing my first album, all the other people I ever was with were so insecure about themselves—they couldn't handle it at all," she revealed. "When I try to describe this to my friends they don't always get it, because they go out with people that are our age, but Simon is already who he is, and I'm still becoming who I'm going to be. He's confident. He's perfect."
But she'd never let fame get in between them even if he did become insecure.
"All of my relationships are more important to me than any tour I'll ever do. If my relationship with Simon or my relationship with Angelo started to flounder a bit now, I would pull out of my tour," she confessed. "My life is more important to me than anything I'm doing because how the f--k am I supposed to write a record if I don't have a life? If I don't have a real life, then it's game over anyway."