As Halsey prepares to release her fifth album, she’s chosen to get candid with fans about her recent health struggles.
On Tuesday, the singer took to Instagram to reveal her apparent battle with lupus, a chronic disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues and organs.
“long story short, i’m Lucky to be alive. short story long, i wrote an album,” the 29-year-old shared in her Instagram post. “it begins with The End. out now.” Her post includes tags for the Lupus Research Alliance and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Halsey is making a donation to both organizations in conjunction with her new song’s release.
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Halsey’s post included a video where she’s seen rubbing her legs as she says, “I feel like an old lady. I told myself I’m giving myself two more years to be sick. ... I’m having a rebirth, and I’m not going to be sick, and I’m going to look super hot and have lots of energy and I’m just going to get to redo my twenties in my thirties.”
Halsey also shared footage of her undergoing treatment in the hospital as well as scenes of her in a studio, recording her new song “The End.” The acoustic guitar ballad, released on Tuesday, begins with Halsey singing, “Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick / Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks / And then they lay it on me / And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain.”
Later in the song, Halsey touches on her apparent near-death illness when she sings, “When I met you, I said I would never die / But the joke was always mine, ’cause I’m racing against time.”
This isn’t the first time Halsey has publicly disclosed her health struggles. She shared her endometriosis diagnosis in 2016, and in 2022, she revealed that her body was “rebelling against” her, citing various ailments since the birth of her son in 2021. She subsequently shared on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Sjogren’s syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, known as POTS.
