As a farm manager choked and bashed his girlfriend during a three-and-a-half hour attack on an isolated rural property, he told her: "You should just die. Give up."
The woman has told a court how she desperately fought for her life during the savage assault in central west NSW and the struggle to live continues months on.
"My battle to stay alive didn't end there ... it's an every day decision," the woman told Orange Local Court during a stirring victim impact statement on Tuesday.
"I hope to go a day without having to make that decision to live."
Her former boyfriend, a 32-year-old man who cannot be named to protect the victim-survivor, has been jailed for at least three years and three months.
The court heard the man's actions had "come out of left field" and he had tried to blame the victim.
Magistrate David Day said the attack was "prolonged" and "extreme", among the worst cases of domestic assault he had dealt with.
"People who choke others are potential murderers," Mr Day said.
The couple began arguing in the early hours of June 16 and the man pushed her through a glass window when she tried to get in a car to escape.
As she lay on the ground crying, he told her he loved her, before dragging her by the hair, choking her, smashing her face into bathroom tiles and jumping on her.
He choked her multiple times, including by kneeling on her throat.
The woman was able to take his phone and escape to a paddock to call police.
She recalled hiding from the man in freezing temperatures, noticing all the lights in the farm house go off.
"Whilst I feared for my life in the paddock ... listening in the dark to every stock movement, every sound, (I was) thinking he was somewhere about to attack me," the woman said.
She suffered severe concussion and psychological harm that could take years of recovery, leaving her unable to work, study or socialise in a small town.
"Before this happened, nothing would scare me. Now everything does," she said.
The man, who appeared via video-link from Bathurst jail wearing prison greens, appeared unmoved during the woman's 25-minute statement.
Police prosecutor Carl Smith said it was only the second time he had heard a victim's statement read in the local court and her words were powerful.
"Often we in the courts simply read a fact sheet and can become desensitised," Sergeant Smith said.
The magistrate said rates of domestic violence in much of country NSW were far worse than the city.
"I don't feign shock when I express my disgust in domestic violence in this area because I've sat in Sydney ... and the incidence and type of domestic violence here is shocking."
The man was sentenced to a maximum four-and-a-half years and will be eligible for parole in September 2027.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
Lifeline 13 11 14
