Britney Spears has said the years she spent under conservatorship have left her scared of the entertainment industry.
The singer revealed her reasons for not being ready to return to the music business after her conservatorship was terminated in November in an Instagram post.
In a lengthy note shared as screenshots, she said: “I wanted to be nice but what they did to my heart was unforgivable. I asked for 13 years to perform new songs and remixes of my old songs … and every time I was told ‘no’”.
The controversial legal arrangement controlled her life for nearly 14 years and took away her right to make basic decisions about her finances, career and personal life.
“It was a setup to make me fail,” she wrote. “So much wasted time to only embarrass me and humiliate me and I guess it seems odd to most now why I don’t even do my music any more. People have no idea the awful things that were done to me personally … and what I’ve been through. I am scared of people and the business. They really hurt me.
“Not doing my music any more is a way of saying ‘fuck you’ in a sense when it actually benefits my family by ignoring my real work.”
Spears shared the statement along with a set of graphics about praying. The final three images are the screenshots of her notes, in which she also talks about losing her faith.
“I had an experience three years ago where I stopped believing in God,” she writes. “From every angle I was being hurt for no reason and my family was hurting me. I went into a state of shock and the way I coped was being in fake denial. It was too much to really face. It then came full circle and my heart took over and I was [a] lion.”
She also writes about her aims for 2022: “My goal for this year is to push myself a bit more and do things that scare me but not too much. I do know what makes me happy and brings me joy and I try to meditate on those places and thoughts that enable me to experience it.”
Lawyers acting for her father have called for her to continue paying his legal fees, claiming he had “stepped up” to protect her from “opportunistic and wholly self-interested parties”.
