It’s been roughly six years since Chris Brown’s brutal attack on Rihanna, and she’s still living with the effects of it today. It changed her life, her music and her perspective on relationships, yet in her tell-all interview in the November issue of Vanity Fair, she reveals how desperately she wanted to “save him.”

Coming out of the storm of being abused, the world positioned a then 20-year-old Rihanna to become the face of domestic violence, a role she says she never wanted. “It’s not a subject to sweep under the rug, so I can’t just dismiss it like it wasn’t anything, or I don’t take it seriously. But, for me, and anyone who’s been a victim of domestic abuse, nobody wants to even remember it. Nobody even wants to admit it. So to talk about it and say it once, much less 200 times, is like … I have to be punished for it? It didn’t sit well with me.”

When Rihanna began to see Brown again, and record songs like 2012’s "Nobody’s Business," the singer was dragged for re-associating with her attacker. In a very emotional interview with Oprah in 2013, Rih revealed what many speculated, that she still loved Breezy.

Now, she explains in greater depth, just why she went back. “I was that girl,” she said. “That girl who felt that as much pain as this relationship is, maybe some people are built stronger than others. Maybe I’m one of those people built to handle s**t like this. Maybe I’m the person who’s almost the guardian angel to this person, to be there when they’re not strong enough, when they’re not understanding the world, when they just need someone to encourage them in a positive way and say the right thing.”

It was then that she shared she thought that she could change him.

“A hundred percent. I was very protective of him. I felt that people didn’t understand him. Even after … But you know, you realize after a while that in that situation you’re the enemy. You want the best for them, but if you remind them of their failures, or if you remind them of bad moments in their life, or even if you say I’m willing to put up with something, they think less of you — because they know you don’t deserve what they’re going to give. And if you put up with it, maybe you are agreeing that you [deserve] this, and that’s when I finally had to say, ‘Uh-oh, I was stupid thinking I was built for this.'”

Even though the exes are no longer friends, she says his place in her life is set in stone. “I don’t hate him. I will care about him until the day I die.”

Read more of RiRi’s shocking revelations in the November issue on stands now. 

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(Photo: Vanity Fair Magazine, November 2015)