I am flying from Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport to Chicago O'Hare Airport on Saturday, December 23rd.

Due to the International Date Line, I will leave Bangkok at 6:40 am and get to Chicago at 11 am the same day, after a 22 hour flight (including a layover in Tokyo), a journey of 9,000 miles.

Brian woke me up at 3 am last night to scream at me, and I no longer feel obligated to stay at my job, at least not for Chris's sake. I do feel bad for my students but things are at the breaking point and I can't stand to be around Brian anymore.

At any rate, I'd have to leave on January 11th anyway, so I'm only leaving two weeks earlier.

My parents bought me the ticket and I can pay them back with my baht from my last paycheck. They said, "Is it going to be ok? He's not going to hurt you, is he?" I was like, "You mean, physically? No. Probably not. Actually I don't know." I've never done anything like this before... at least not this serious.

Today he made me call in sick to look for these elusive "other jobs" which can get around the Ministry of Education's rules. But before he left he made sure to yell at me for as long as possible. I don't feel like going into the details.

I got two emails this morning, one from my old friend Michael, who said this:

"i was married for 17 years, it was the worst time of my life. it was a marriage of convenience. "love" did not last long, and i too dreamed of 'escaping'. I missed my soulmate because of the marriage; had i broken it off earlier i would have been in a place to pursue her and i'd be in a whole different place than i am today. the moral is -- don't wait too long or you might miss out on something that could change your life in a positive way forever."

And this, from Lyle:

"it's a terrible cliche, but life is really too short to spend it with someone who doesn't appreciate you in the right ways."

I am very, very afraid of Brian's reaction. I'm going to wait until tomorrow night to tell him. I'm getting on a bus to Bangkok on Friday morning. It's Tuesday morning right now. What might happen between now and then is very frightening to me.

I'm not leaving him, completely, I'm leaving this situation. If he wants to be with me, he can try to treat me better. And he can understand that I came to Thailand for him, got a job that I hated, for which I was completely unqualified, for him, did everything for him, and if he's going to treat me like this I have no reason to be here. Not that he will even listen to me long enough for me to say that.

Wish me luck. This is so fucking scary.

But Chicago for Christmas! And just in time!

I told my parents to bring me a lot of sweaters. I wonder if there's snow.