George Michael admitted in his very last interview that he felt “bullied by the gods”

His Christmas song remains a classic, but heartbreakingly, for George Michael, the joyous time of year has always also been a time of pain.

The singer, who died on Christmas 2016 at the age of 53, remembers the time when he lost two of the people he loved most in his last project. George Michael: Freedom.

In the 90-minute documentary, which he was working on just days before his death, Michael tells viewers how much the deaths of his first love, Anselmo Feleppa, and his mother, Lesley Angold Panayiotou, have weighed on him emotionally, particularly in the five years between their deaths.

“This is the story of how fame and tragedy collided,” says Michael in the documentary – according to The sun – about his private life at the height of his band Wham!'s popularity.

He describes his feelings as feeling like he had been “pecked by the gods” and talks about the pain he felt from Christmas 1991 to December 1996.

“From the day I found out about my partner to the day I can say I was on the road to recovery from my mother, it was just constant fear. It was either fear of death or fear of the next bereavement,” Michael tells the cameras, according to a transcript from The mirror“I had never felt such depression. It was the darkest time.”

Michael described Christmas Day 1991 as “the darkest, most frightening time of my life” and recalls waiting in the UK for fashion designer Feleppa to be diagnosed with AIDS in Los Angeles, while their relationship was kept secret from the public and their families.

“I was sitting at the Christmas table not knowing if my partner, who the people at the table knew nothing about, … not knowing if the man I was in love with was terminally ill, and therefore not knowing if I was potentially terminally ill,” says Michael.

Michael and Feleppa first met in January 1991 at the Rock in Rio concert and, according to the star, they had instant chemistry. “In front of 160,000 people, there was this guy on the right side of the stage who just stared at me with this look,” Michael describes. “He was so sweet. He distracted me so much that I stayed away from that corner because otherwise I thought I would get really distracted and forget the lyrics. The moment I looked at him, I felt like he was going to become a part of my life.”

Just months into their romance, Feleppa came down with the flu and was advised to get an HIV test while staying at Michael's house in LA.

“I remember looking up at the sky and saying, 'Don't you dare do this to me!'” Michael says in the documentary. The sunFeleppa decided not to fly to the UK to see Michael until the new year, when Michael told him that he was HIV positive.

“I was absolutely devastated when I found out he was terminally ill… just devastated,” Michael tells viewers, as reported The mirror.

Also at the same time, Michael's friend Freddie Mercury died of bronchial pneumonia, a complication of his own battle with AIDS.

“I just wanted to die inside. I was so overwhelmed singing the songs of this man I had idolized as a child, who had died in the same way that my first living partner would die,” the singer recalls her musical tribute to Mercury in April 1992 at Wembley Stadium.

While Michael was still grieving the loss of his first love, he suffered a severe heartbreak shortly afterwards in 1996 when his mother was told that her cancer was incurable and that she would be allowed to spend her last Christmas at home with the family.

“I was so devastated and felt so damned teased by the gods. My whole adult life she was phenomenal. Terrible, terrible loss,” Michael says of his mother's death from the disease, months later in February 1997.

Michael struggled with depression after losing both his mother and his lover within a few years.

“I had never felt such depression before. It was different from grief. It was on top of grief, I was still grieving for my mother, but it was different. It was the darkest time,” Michael tells viewers.

Using previously unpublished archive and private recordings Freedom The goal is to give viewers a first-hand look at how Michael became one of the most influential recording artists of all time.

Tragically, Michael's US press secretary confirmed to PEOPLE last Christmas that the musician had died of heart failure.

George Michael: Freedom will premiere on Showtime on October 21 at 9 p.m. ET – 10 months after Michael’s death.