Exactly. It’s terrible that she’s gone back to him, but it’s not easy & if you haven’t been through it, it’s impossible to understand. But a little empathy goes a long way.

Brave & beautiful post, girl. Thank you for sharing it with us.

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Lots of people are mad at her. Disappointed in her. Frustrated. Angry.

And I am mad at her too. But I am mad at her for different reasons. I am mad at her because I am mad at myself. Still, after all these years. 

I am mad at her because I understand. 

I was in a very, very bad relationship for a long time. Whenever I’ve talked about it, I’ve shied away from using the term “abusive,” because — thank god — I was never beaten up the way Rihanna was. I never went to the hospital. I never had any broken bones. I never called the cops.

But I was hit. I was punched. I was shoved, and pushed, and slapped. I was screamed at. I was told that I was stupid and ugly and awful. I heard these things so often that, eventually, I believed them. And once I believed these things, I just kept coming back to him, helpless and spineless, because I truly thought that everything he said to me was right. I thought — no, at that point, I knew — that I deserved what he did to me.  

My friends tried to get me out of the relationship, of course. Over and over again, they would tell me to end it. And I would, for a day or two. Maybe even a week. But then we would get back together. That’s how these relationships are. I couldn’t help it. I fluctuated between thinking that I wasn’t worth anything without him, and thinking that I could fix him. Somewhere in the middle was the truth: that I was inextricably intertwined with him, and the physical aggression in our relationship only bound us tighter together. 

Even now, writing this more than five years after I finally ended it, I still want to make excuses for him. He has problems. He is sick. That was my mantra. He was an alcoholic and an addict, and when he was doing those things to me, he wasn’t himself. It’s been years, yet I still feel sorry for him. I still feel like some of the things that he did to me were my fault. Whenever I talk about him now, even to people who know what happened, I can’t help but be apologetic. He had problems. He was sick. 

So, to all of these people shaking their heads, saying how mad they are at her because of what she’s doing now, please think about what you’re saying. She is dealing with something that isn’t just wiped away in a day, or a month, or even a year. She is dealing with something that took me three psychologists, two moves, and at least four nervous breakdowns to get over. And, from the few details we know about their relationship, she is dealing with something far worse than I did.

Yes, of course, even aside from the level of the abuse, Rihanna and my situations are very different. I am not a celebrity. I’ve never purported to be a role model — although, one could say that she hasn’t either. But she is a public person, and I, aside from this quasi-anonymous blog, am not. So maybe that’s where these people at The Daily What and everywhere else are coming from. Maybe they think — mistakenly, in my opinion — that the price of her celebrity is that she has to adhere to a higher standard, one where she doesn’t get the time and the chances and the unwavering support that my friends gave me. But that just seems cruel.

The instant that I heard about Chris Brown’s arrest, I remember knowing that they would get back together. I knew it would take more than one horrific beating for her to get him out of her life for good. I knew she wouldn’t be able to stay away, no matter how many people tried to make her.

I knew all of these things, because I understand.