Selena Gomez: Life After Justin Bieber Fraught With Challenges In The Instagram Generation

Selena Gomez has gone out of her way to become her own woman. After years of peddling the Disney product, her new album Revival shows a more mature Selena Gomez, a woman who has grown into her own celebrity and channeled new creativity.

However, every turn she makes is filled with the inevitable questions surrounding her famous ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber. And the 23-year old is sick of it. She told Rolling Stone in a recent interview, when asked about Justin serenading her before the American Music Awards, that she was “so beyond done with talking about that, and him” and that “nothing is going to dictate how [she] feels unless [she] lets it.”

She expressed similar sentiments again to W Magazine a month later, hoping to quell the obsessive flame that “Jelena” fans carry with them. Selena looked back on the effect her initial dating experience with Justin had on her life and the intense scrutiny that surrounded it.

“At first I didn’t care. To me it was: I’m 18, I have a boyfriend, we look cute together, we like that,” Gomez said. “Then I got my heart broken and I cared. Because people had no idea what was going on, but everywhere it was a million different things. I was kind of in a corner, banging my head against the wall. I didn’t know where to go.”

That head-banging experience continued into adulthood as Gomez has sought freedom from being pinned into the celebrity couple cocoon.

“I’m so exhausted. I honestly am so done. I care about his health and well-being. But I can’t do it anymore.”

But that sentiment hasn’t stopped the endless parade of Justin-Selena shippers hoping the two eventually reunite and find love together. Nor does it truly protect her from the onslaught of obsessive “Beliebers” who want nothing more than to harm any female that dares enter Justin’s life and talk bad about him.

Case in point, this past week when Selena came under fire from the fervent Bieber fan base for daring to speak honestly about the challenges of having her heart broken and being single. As reported by Us Weekly, Selena posted a now-deleted video of herself rapping to Lil Wayne’s breakup tune “Single,” where she recited the lines, “She hate it when I do that s–t. And when I get home she goes through my s–t.”

Gomez capped the playful video by screaming “I’m single!” into the camera. For any other celeb this kind of innocent behavior would have come and gone without any fanfare made of it. But immediately “Beliebers” accused her of throwing shade toward her ex, which then resulted in the post deletion and arguments in the comment section.

“I want to delete my Instagram,” Selena captioned, exhausted from fighting off the masses from her post. She followed up that she wasn’t singing to Justin but as a joke to the song’s creator Lil Wayne. She finally capped off her argument by once again letting her feelings about Bieber known when she captioned, “My life isn’t about my ex.”

And yet, she can’t help but be forever connected to him. Even when Bieber himself moves on to models like Hailey Baldwin, he is also forever plagued with the comparisons to his relationship with Selena Gomez. And while celebrity life is a double-edged sword in that regard, at least Selena has managed to keep her faith throughout her public ordeals.

As reported by Billboard, Gomez recently performed her track “Nobody” at L.A.’s Belasco Theatre to a surpsrised Christian audience. When asked about the meaning behind the song, she confessed the one true love of her life.

“God,” Selena Gomez replied, adding “Nobody is about Him.”

[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]