“Once a belieber, always a belieber,” were the words I mouthed as a 12-year-old girl. To preteen me, life revolved around Justin Drew Bieber, and I daydreamed about meeting him every moment.

This fantasy continued throughout my middle school and high school years. Suddenly, I was in college, responsible for my own bills and needing to keep my grades up. My love for Bieber took a backseat, and I was focused on building a career for myself. In the midst of discovering who I am without my family around me, I was not focused on being a belieber.

A week or so ago, I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a video of Justin Bieber singing “Baby” on stage for Coachella’s “Bieberchella”. Then I came across a video of him singing “Baby,” then “Beauty and a Beat,” and once again, I was a twelve-year-old singing along to every word.

The tweets from my mutuals on my Justin Bieber fanpage on Twitter, which is still active, did not shock me at all. It was completely expected for people who grew up adoring him to want to share this moment with other people they interacted with during the era. What shocked me was the number of people, especially men, who seemed to suddenly support him.

I grew up vocally supporting Bieber, which means I grew up being ridiculed by boys in my class for liking him. Openly admiring Bieber came with homophobia targeted toward you. It was not just students who thought it was funny to mock me for liking Bieber. Every time some of my teachers thought I was not behaving in class, they would make fun of him because they knew that was the only thing that would make me upset enough to be quiet for the rest of the day.

Suddenly seeing Bieber adored by the masses again after supporting him through some of his worst moments PR-wise was weirdly bittersweet. On one hand, I was happy that he was finally being adored publicly again after being hated for so long. After being mocked for opening up about his drug addiction and Lyme disease, I was happy people were not picking on him for once. On the other hand, I know some of these people who claim to reminisce about his old songs would have bullied me if we went to the same high school. I knew these people making reels about being a real “Bieber” fan would have been the first ones mocking me for listening to his songs.

Despite how I feel about other people’s reactions to the performance, it healed something in me that I did not know needed healing. After being by myself in a different country for the past four years, I felt like I was home for the first time in a long while. After his tour cancellations during the Purpose tour, I never thought he would look that happy performing. Yet, there he was, on his laptop, playing his old songs and singing along. Then, a week later, he was on the stage with Billie Eilish, giving her a “One Less Lonely Girl” performance.

Now, I recognize my story is weirdly parasocial. But after all he went through just recently, with Ramsay Hunt disease, firing his entire team who had been there throughout his career, and everything else about his past in the music industry that has come into public attention recently, it feels like seeing your childhood friend finally getting the happiness they deserve. And at the end of this, maybe 12-year-old me was right. Maybe you are always a belieber if you are a belieber once, and maybe Bieber Fever is indeed incurable.