Selena Gomez wishes you didn’t know who she was.
“Look, I love what I do,” the former Disney star said in the April issue of Vogue. “And I’m aware of how lucky I am, but — how can I say this without sounding weird? I just really can’t wait for people to forget about me.”
Gomez, 24, also opened up about her most recent rehab stint.
She checked into a Tennessee facility in September 2016, staying for 90 days, reportedly due to anxiety and depression stemming from lupus. While she previously called it “a really difficult time,” she also admits it was a very valuable experience.
“You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls, real people who couldn’t give two s—ts about who I was, who were fighting for their lives,” she admitted. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done.”
The rehabilitation stint followed an embarrassing social media feud with ex Justin Bieber and an early end to her world tour.
“I’ve cried onstage more times than I can count, and I’m not a cute crier,” she said. “Tours are a really lonely place for me. My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically, I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it — which, I think, was a complete distortion.”
Gomez’s insecurity partially stemmed from her audience not being what it used to be.
“I was so used to performing for kids. At concerts I used to make the entire crowd raise up their pinkies and make a pinky promise never to allow anybody to make them feel that they weren’t good enough,” she explained. “Suddenly I have kids smoking and drinking at my shows, people in their 20s, 30s, and I’m looking into their eyes, and I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t say, ‘Everybody, let’s pinky-promise that you’re beautiful!’ It doesn’t work that way, and I know it because I’m dealing with the same s—t they’re dealing with.”
Gomez, who’s currently dating The Weeknd, also enacted a bit of a social media sabbatical (though that certainly seems to have come to an end).
“As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out,” she confessed. “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like s–t when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”
