Selena Gomez opens up about 2014 rehab stint, says she ‘needed time to just be OK’

Singer-actress Selena Gomez, who said in October that lupus was the reason for a 2014 hiatus that included time at a rehab facility, gave new details Thursday about her struggle with the autoimmune disease.

The time Gomez spent seeking treatment at the Wickenburg, Arizona, rehab clinic The Meadows “is something that everyone always wants to fixate on,” she told GQ magazine in an interview conducted in early March. “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 OK. And I was going through [medical treatment] and I went to two different locations for those treatments. It’s really frustrating, because I am 100 percent allowed to have that, but I think people just want to have some sort of . . .” Gomez, 23, said, her voice trailing off.

“We’re easy targets,” the one-time Disney Channel star continued, referring to child actors. “Every single kid who was brought up like this is an easy target. It’s disgusting.”

Gomez, who next appears in “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” on May 20, also described how she first revealed her disease publicly, to a sick child during a morale visit she made to a hospital.

“There was this kid that wouldn’t look me in the eye at all,” she recalled, adding, “I wanted to get his attention, even though maybe it was too much. So I just said, ‘Ask me anything you want.’ And he was the first person that I told, besides my best friend and family, because 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.”

She then said, in what the magazine called a weary tone, “I don’t ever really like to sit and dwell on what that experience was. Was it fun? No. Is it fun to have it? No.”