Is it therapeutic to talk about it?
Um, I don’t like talking about it a lot. But every time I do, it’s better; it’s easier each time.

Because you said something about wanting to give some insight to young women.
Mm-hmm.

And that’s a brave thing. You could have said nothing.
Mm-hmm.

What made you decide that this was the right thing to do?
Because I wanted to move on. And I knew that was the only way I could have done it. And I wanted people to move on with me. ‘Cause the last big thing they know about me is That Night. And I don’t want that to be what people define me as.

Before I came here—I live across the street from a pretty tough public school in New York City. And I went to talk to the girls there.
Oh, wow.

Just to say, “Hey, I’m going to meet Rihanna. What would you like to know?” And it was interesting, because a lot of them had been in your situation, and they wanted to know how you handled it. Are those the insights you’re talking about?
I guess definitely. I just knew I’d be good one day. I just knew it. So I just kept waiting for that day. Like, you know, even though it was tough the entire time, there were ups and downs, I just kept knowing: I’m gonna get over it one day. I’m gonna get over it.

Who helped you through it?
Nobody.

… [N]obody helped you through it. Really?
Nobody. Really just music. And working. ‘Cause I didn’t really want to be around anybody, for them to stare at me and stuff, and feel sorry for me. So I just—I stayed in the house a lot. Then I started to get cabin fever. I was like, I’m going crazy in here.

But what about all the friends you’ve met…you have a great relationship with Jay-Z. With Justin Timberlake. Were all these people supportive of you through the past eight months?
Absolutely.

But you still felt alone?
Me and Jay-Z, we have a very close relationship, so he was there helping me through it and giving me advice and guidance, and just words of support. Like, strength.

Were you in shock?
Initially. I would say the first…the first seventy-two hours after I realized, it hit. The entire thing was kind of a daze. I was confused. It was a little weird, but…but then, after, I was getting bored of being in the house and sittin’ around. I called Jay Brown—he’s my A&R—and I was like, “I want to get back to the studio. I want to get back.”

In one of the tracks on the album, you sing about thinking you might die…did you think you would die that night?
No…no. [long silence]

It must take a lot of strength to deal with all this. I mean, just the basic things. Like, how did you have the presence of mind to call 911?
I didn’t call 911. No. I know everybody thinks I did, but it was someone else…It was…

Rihanna looks at the Hovering Manager and then mutters something about having just spoken to Diane Sawyer about all this. But here’s the weird thing: You get the feeling that Rihanna still has a lot to say. Her eyes are wet when anything Chris Brown-related comes up. She has a tendency to stare off into the distance when she talks about It—but then she meets the glare of the manager. Maybe she does want to go there—and can’t. Or perhaps it is dawning on Rihanna that to really step out and be the kind of advocate she says she wants to be is another burden altogether.

When you say you want to give insight to young women—what was the biggest insight you got? What did you learn?
Um…really really really that love is blind. It took a lot of strength to pull out of that relationship. To finally just officially cut it off. It was like night and day. It was two different worlds. It was the world I lived for two years, and then having the strength to say, “I’m gonna step into my own world. Start over.”

What was harder, the physical pain or the emotional pain?
Definitely not the physical pain. The physical pain comes and it goes. The bruises fade away. But the thing that stays with you is the emotional scars.

You were in love.
Yeah.

And you were a kid.
Yeah.

Do you think you two will ever be friends?
Mmm. Maybe in like ten years, you know? But it’s not something that I’m depending on. I’m not depending on his friendship.

Right. How do you ever trust again?
I can trust. I mean, I don’t like to stereotype; I believe everybody’s an individual. You can’t judge someone based on someone else’s actions. There are people in the world who will love you and people in the world who will hurt you, and there are people in the world who will do both.

Do you think a man who does something like that can change?
Absolutely. Yeah. Some of them won’t change and some of them will—but you know, very few of them change.

You know, when I talked to those high school girls…and this illustrates how difficult a problem it is: Their first question was “What did she do to get hit?”
Mm-hmm.

And I thought, Oh God, how awful is it that they’d ask that question.
Mm-hmm. After everything happened, it was a wake-up call to me…I didn’t realize how much of an effect it had on young girls’ lives, and that’s part of the insight that I wanna give. Stop blaming yourself for that outcome. There’s nothing you can do, ever, to excuse a man’s behavior like that.

Did you blame yourself?
Initially? I mean…actually, no, I never blamed myself, but I wondered what, what did I do to provoke it?…

This is the breaking point. Hovering Manager chimes in with “You’ve exhausted it now.”

Okay. Well then. How did the cover shoot go? I heard the pictures are really hot.
[giggles] It’s very sexy, yeah. At one point [chairman, Island Def Jam Music Group] L.A. Reid came into the shoot, and he was like, “Rihanna, put some fucking clothes on!”

These are pretty. [She is wearing a couple of dozen bangle bracelets.]
Thank you.