This is a song about someone who's so convinced they deserve what's happening to them that they can't tell the difference between staying because they want to and staying because they've been threatened into it. The speaker knows they're being destroyed but treats that destruction like proof of their own worthlessness rather than evidence they should leave. Anhedönia has said Ethel exists as the version of herself who gave in instead of breaking the cycle, and here that means a narrator who hears 'you can only leave once we're both dead' and processes it as relationship terms instead of a murder threat.
Sometimes you make me wanna put my fucking head through the wall / Sometimes I wonder if I even know you at all
The violence she wants to do to herself shows up before any violence done to her gets named. She's already pointing the rage inward, treating self-harm as the reasonable response to confusion rather than questioning why she doesn't know this person she's trapped with.
I know I don't need you, but I'm terrified of letting you go / Even after all the times you fucked the shit out of me while I was crying, 'No'
The knowledge and the terror exist in the same breath without resolution. She can state the rape plainly and still frame letting go as her failure, not his, like the violence is just information that doesn't change the core question of whether she's strong enough to leave.
How am I supposed to feel good about myself when everything I do is wrong? / When I'm just an ugly bitch, a fucking freak, can I don't wanna go on?
She's quoting his voice but presenting it as objective fact about herself. The shift from 'you make me feel' to 'I am' is instant. She's internalized his assessment so completely that self-hatred doesn't even register as something being done to her anymore.
Shooting up our old school when we get bored of shooting up / And fuck the cops, and fuck God, and fuck this town for ruining us
Mass violence gets framed as a couples activity born from boredom, and the rage finally surfaces but it's pointed everywhere except at him. The town ruined them. God didn't want them. She'll curse the entire world before she'll say his name as the problem.
You always told me I could only leave you once we're both dead, dead
This is a death threat she's accepted as the structure of the relationship. Not 'he won't let me leave' but 'I could only leave,' like it's a condition she agreed to, a rule that applies to both of them equally, mutual devotion instead of captivity.
The scariest part is how she hears 'you can only leave once we're both dead' and doesn't hear a threat. She hears terms. The violence is extreme but the framing is almost bureaucratic, like she's been handed a contract with a death clause and her only question is whether she's brave enough to accept it. Anhedönia built Ethel to absorb the damage she refused to carry herself, and here that means a narrator who cannot imagine exit as something she's allowed to want.