“I Don't Have Anything to Hide,” Rihanna Tells ELLE

The pop star also bemoaned a "major drought" of eligible bachelors

Rihanna's opening up about just why she's back in touch with her abusive ex Chris Brown — and why it's no use judging her for it.

"It gave me guns," the pop startold the May issue of ELLE

of their very public break-up in 2009.

"[People] know more about me than I want them to know. It’s embarrassing. But that was my opening," she said of the split, which came after Brown brutally assaulted her just before the Grammys.

"I was going through the hardest time of my life. I was angry, sad, confused, torn," she said of the assault's aftermath, which inspired much of her 2010 album "Rated R."

"That was the only way I could get peace, because it was in my head, and I couldn't leave it there," she said of the process of making the record.

And what about her and Brown's recent reconciliation?

"You can say what you want about it. I don’t have anything to hide," she said.

The backlash in response to their beginning to patch things up has been hard to take, she said, but hasn't cowed her independence.

"People end up wasting their time on the blogs or whatever, ranting away, and that’s all right. Because tomorrow I’m still going to be the same person. I’m still going to do what I want to do," she said.

The 24-year-old hitmaker hasn't any immediate plans to start a family, either, she said.

"First, of course, I have to find a man," she said. "There’s just a major drought out there."

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