Rihanna opens up on the Chris-Brown-assault

The singer has finally opened up on the gruesome incident that took place on the evening of the '08 Grammys. Ever since, the memory of the verbal and physical abuse from her then boyfriend Chris Brown has piggybacked into our consciousness every time we see the artist. Her in-yer-face sense of fashion is probably the only other dimension we care to talk about. But all that's about to change. With the upcoming release of her latest album Rated R, Riri has also made up her mind to move on publicly. She speaks without inhibition on the emotional turmoil to Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.

"He was definitely my first big love," Rihanna said. "We were best friends, so we fell in love with each other. To fall in love with your best friend it can be scary because the emotions get... the best of you," she explained. "We just fell really fast, [and] the more in love we became the more dangerous we became for each other, equally dangerous, 'cause it was a bit of an obsession almost."

Of the night she remembers that ""he had no soul in his eyes, just blank He was clearly blacked out. There was no person when I looked at him."

Though she regrets the brief reconciliation after the battering much to her fans' astonishment, she explains why she did it: "The love doesn't go away right away. He didn't accept that very well. He obviously didn't want us to be apart, but I know how to make a decision for me."

She recalls how hard it was to take a stance and call it off. "It was confusing for me. I was still attached by love. But I wasn't thinking about the reality of the situation. You start lying to yourself. This is a memory you don't want to have ever again. The physical wounds go away, you put it in the back of your head and you start lying to yourself subconsciously I felt very lonely. I couldn't even go back to my own house because there were 200 people outside with cameras, paparazzi, journalists, fans, neighbors."

Over the last couple of months, Rihanna has had time to move on from humiliation and hate to certainty that she made the right decision for herself that has also instilled an empathy for Brown's plight in the media.

"If I feel this depressed, then what is he going through? I had to protect him. I thought that I had to let him know, 'Don't do anything crazy. Like, just hang in there.' The whole world hates him now. His fans, his career. I'm not saying that's an excuse for me to go back, but this is what I was thinking about."

"I don't have a desire at all to be with him," she added. "I can't see how we would get back together, but I'm also not God, and I can't predict the future. No, I don't hate him at all. I actually love and care about him, and I think I'm concerned about him doing well. I want him to do well."

Rihanna felt it was high-time she spoke out loud about the taboo night as, "I knew I had to do this in order to move on for me and in order for my fans to move on with me, because it would always be a question in their mind," she said. "I don't want that five years from now — every time they see Rihanna, they think of Chris Brown beating me. That's not who I am. It's just one thing that happened to me."