Selena clarified to the GQ mag that her highly-publicized stay at an Arizona rehab facility in 2014 wasn’t for substance abuse (like many people speculated), but for chemotherapy, a common way to treat lupus.
“First off, this is something that everyone always wants to fixate on,” Sel said about rehab. “I got diagnosed with lupus. My mom had a very public miscarriage. So I had to cancel my tour. I needed time to just be okay.
“It’s really frustrating, because I am 100 percent allowed to have that,” she continued. “I don’t think it really matters. My past seems to be way more fascinating for people than my future, which bums me out.”
Selena’s right — she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for being in rehab, and she still doesn’t. That’s her story and hers alone. And while she says she doesn’t like to “sit and dwell” on being sick, she did share a sweet story about once opening up to a patient at a children’s hospital.
“He was the first person that I told [about having lupus], besides my best friend and family,” Selena recalls. “He asked me, ‘Have you ever dealt with anything like this?’ And I said, ‘I have lupus. I was in the ICU for two and a half weeks. I was in this exact same room.’ And it was the first time that he looked at me.”
For now, it seems Selena would like her illness to be added to the list of things she’d prefer not to talk about in the future (along with He Who Must Not Be Named).
“I just have to be patient and make great things with quality, from producing to singing to acting,” she said. “And one by one, I will be able to change the dialogue and people won’t care about everything that’s happened to me.”
