From the album Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You
This is a song about someone who chose a partner specifically because he wouldn't stop her from destroying herself, then spends the entire song punishing herself for the destruction she invited. She knows the relationship failed because she picked someone who operated on 'do whatever you like' when what she needed was someone who'd tell her no, but she can't let herself off the hook for that because leaving would require admitting the whole thing was set up to collapse from the beginning.
I liked him 'cause his rule was, 'Do whatever you like' and I tried, alright / Now I'll wear these scars for life
She admits the attraction was to his refusal to impose boundaries, which directly caused the scars she's now claiming as penance. The line reveals she engineered her own wound by choosing someone who wouldn't intervene, but she still treats the outcome as her moral failure rather than a predictable result of that initial choice.
I swore I'd be good to you / Then sat and watched as you walked away from me
The passivity contradicts the promise. Being good to someone and watching them leave without acting are incompatible, but she frames both as things she did to him rather than recognizing the inaction itself was the betrayal.
Are you angry? Do you hate me? / And darling, time may forgive me / But I won't
She never lets him answer whether he's angry. The questions exist to justify her self-punishment, not to actually find out what he thinks, which means his forgiveness wouldn't matter even if he offered it because she's already decided she doesn't deserve it.
Love is not enough in this world / But I still believe in Nebraska dreamin'
She states love's insufficiency in one breath and doubles down on romantic fantasy in the next without reconciling the two. The contradiction just sits there, unresolved, because acknowledging it would mean admitting the whole framework is broken.
I can wait if I want / But it'll never be good enough like I want to believe it is
The conclusion isn't that she'll leave or that things will change. It's that she knows waiting won't work but she's going to keep doing it anyway, treating the failure of devotion as something she just hasn't performed correctly yet rather than a strategy that was never going to succeed.
The song ends with her knowing waiting will never be good enough but unable to stop waiting, because leaving would require admitting she chose this relationship specifically for its inability to save her. Anhedönia has said Ethel absorbs damage so the artist doesn't have to, and here the damage is choosing someone who'd let her destroy herself then treating the destruction as love she failed to perform correctly rather than the outcome she engineered.