Justin Bieber has been documenting what appears to be an intense period of self-reflection through a series of Instagram posts for more than three months. In his latest upload, the 31-year-old responded to the people who “keep telling me to heal,” writing: “Don’t you think if I could have fixed myself I would have already? I know I’m broken. I know I have anger issues.”
Bieber added: “I tried to do the work my whole life to be like the people who told me I needed to be fixed like them. And it just keeps making me more tired and more angry. The harder I try to grow, the more focussed on myself I am. Jesus is the only person who keeps me wanting to make my life about others. Because honestly I’m exhausted with thinking about myself lately aren’t you?”
Over the past few weeks, Bieber has found himself at the center of increasingly tense run-ins with paparazzi. Viral footage shows the musician pleading with the swarms of photographers around him, urging them to see him as a human being and respect his privacy. This weekend, one clip surfaced showing him telling paparazzi that he is “not afraid to set boundaries,” adding: “I don’t know you. You don’t go to people you don’t know and say shit out of nowhere with a camera in their face. It doesn’t matter if I’m a celebrity or not. It doesn’t matter if I’m a public figure.”
These interactions come as Bieber continues to open up online about struggles within his interpersonal relationships and internal battles stemming from fame. A recent Instagram post from the singer shared screenshots of a conversation with an unnamed person who told him, “I’m not used to someone lashing out at me. It’s not that I don’t see and feel your anger.” Bieber responded with a declaration that his friendship with this person “is officially over.”
“I will never suppress my emotions for someone. Conflict is a part of relationship. If you don’t like my anger you don’t like me. My anger is a response to pain I have been thru. Asking a traumatized person not to be traumatized is simply mean,” he wrote in the messages. “I will never accept a man calling my anger lashing out. I enjoyed our short lived relationship. I wasn’t kidding when I told u I didn’t need u as a friend. I have good friends. Who will respect these boundaries.”
Bieber’s posts from earlier this year found him interrogating the weight of growing up in the public eye. “I was always told when I was a kid not to hate,” he wrote in March. “But it made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to hate it and so I didn’t tell anyone I’ve had it. Which made me feel like I have been drowning feeling unsafe to acknowledge it. I think we can only let hate go by first acknowledging it’s there. How couldn’t we feel hate from all of the hurt we have experienced?”
Bieber recently split from his longtime manager Scooter Braun, who acknowledged that their relationship is “not the same that it was,” and other members of his team. Representatives for the singer have denied reports that the singer is in “alleged financial distress” and slammed public obsession over the singer’s mental and physical health as being “exhausting and pitiful.”
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