EXCLUSIVE: Bachelorette Julien Hug's Heartbreaking Suicide Note: 'If Life's Not Enjoyable, Why Stick Around?'

The reality television star who shot himself in a Californian desert wrote a heartbreaking suicide note to his parents, in which he said: "If life's not enjoyable, why stick around?"

Julien Hug, 35, left the handwritten note for Bertrand and Denise Hug, explaining he was suffering from “severe depression” and felt suicide was the only way out.

"I feel terribly about the grief I've caused," Hug, a one-time contestant on The Bachelorette wrote.

"This will hurt you… I'm sorry to have to do this to you... I love you both tremendously."

The restaurateur said: “People will think I took the easy way out. I say I took the smart way out.”

Hug was a contestant in the ABC show, a spinoff of the network's competitive dating show The Bachelor, in May 2009.

Jillian Harris passed him over for Ed Swiderski.

His note read as follows:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sorry to do this. I feel terribly about the grief I've caused. The phantom stomach aches that I have hurts me tremendously. I've suffered from severe depression for years. I feel awful and don't know how to cope. If life's not enjoyable, why stick around? This will hurt you. I'm sorry to have to do this to you. I love you both tremendously. You two are the best parents. You both are 99.999999999 better than most. You guys did it right.

I am so sorry to do this to you. I feel only love for you mom and dad. But I'm terribly sad everyday. I hurt. People will think I took the easy way out. I say I took the smart way out.

Tell everyone I love them. Make sure everyone knows that I just want to be in peace. I love everyone. I'm so sorry to have to do this.

It's the only way I know how.

Julien.

Hug's body was found last Wednesday in the remote Pinyon Pines area off Highway 74 in Riverside County, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles.