Rihanna speaks out

When this story broke in February, I was at work fighting for professional composure to hide the emotional rawness that creeped to the surface as I learned more details. Rihanna's trauma gave me flashbacks of my own, being only seven fragile months (what seemed like seven minutes) into trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered self. I had already tried to walk away at least six times by that point, with one final (successful) attempt awaiting me 7 months in the future.  But the only thing I felt that day in February was transported back to the fear and panic of August 2008 -- surviving the verbal abuse, humiliation, intimidation and rage that left a hole in my wall and in my soul.

I never fixed the wall. I made a choice to leave it as a reminder of what I escaped from, what would have been waiting for me in the future. The hardest thing about emotional abuse is that it's experienced in your mind. You don't look in the mirror and see a black eye. There's no police report detailing the ways he's hurt you. As soon as the attack passes, you're weaker but you deny it, you spin it, or you believe his insults. The punctured wall proved my fairy tale had become a nightmare. It was a matter of time before he aimed for my head.

Having said that, I made the same mistake that Rihanna talks about. The wall should have been my wake-up call, and it was for a good 9 months. But I let the lingering feelings of love and his pleas and promises woo me back to lethal ground. It took a death threat for me to come to my senses.

**My favorite quotes from this interview:

"I'll say this to any young girl going through domestic violence: Don't react off of love. F' love. Come out of the situation and look at it third-person and for what it really is and then make your decision. Because love is so blind. It's so blind. "

"I am strong. This happened to me. I didn't cause this. I didn't do it. It happened to me and it can happen to anybody; and I'm glad it happened to me because now I can help young girls as they go through it."