Throughout the last decade, adoring fans have watched pop sensation Britney Spears rise and fall through periods of success and drama.

Since her first album in 1999, Spears has become one of the tabloids’ favorite celebrities, especially as she went from marrying Kevin Federline in 2004 to shaving her head and losing her children this year. Her fans sat back and wondered what on earth was going on in her mind.

For those of us who live outside the limelight, it is difficult to understand the lives of the stars. When they perform well, we adore them, but in the chance they act up, we do our best to ruin their lives with pesky paparazzi.

In an attempt to regain fans and calm down the masses, who are constantly on her case, MTV premiered “Britney Spears: For the Record,” a personal documentary and an opportunity to let Spears tell her story.

To draw the focus more on Spears’ perspective, the documentary was sponsored by perfume labels Curious and Fantasy, the singer’s own. The only commercials during the entire documentary were for her products, an effort to put the attention on Spears.

The documentary itself was far from just a monotonous interview. Instead, it included behind the scenes footage of Spears’ life. To explain what Spears has gone through this past year, she was asked several questions about what was going on in her mind and why her life had become so messy.

“I’m a smart girl, so what the heck was I thinking?” Spears said in the interview. She also went on to say that she loves the life of a celebrity. She can deal with the paparazzi, but all she really wants is to just be the best person that she can be.

Spears explained that losing her children broke her to the point where she didn’t even know who she was anymore.

In the documentary, viewers got a special glimpse of what Spears’ life is like by showing a typical day. This was a smart choice: it invoked sympathy for Spears as she was not even able to go shopping in a mall without being attacked by a large group of fans.

Sure, the stars should know what they are getting into by stepping into the limelight, but that does not make it any less stressful. Watching footage of Spears joking around on the set of her new music video, it was clear that Spears is just as ordinary as anyone else — she just has a lot of money to roll around in. She told jokes, impersonated the people around her and laughed with some of her friends — stuff normal people would do.

After the documentary’s airing, Spears said she just wants to do her job of providing quality musical entertainment. Spears admits that she slacked in being a positive role model, but she believes everyone deserves a second chance, and she is working intensely to improve herself as a person as well as an artist.

So please, just leave the girl alone already.