tomorrow i'm supposed to get on a bus to bangkok at 4 pm. now he is trying to convince me to stay. saying he didn't realize how unhappy i was, wasn't aware that i didn't like it here. that the people at his work want him to stay so bad that they could help me get a job & visa, supposedly teaching high school. do i want to do that? i'm too tired to think about it. and if i canceled my flight and it didn't work out, all i'd get is 3 more weeks of thailand and still have to go home.

he says that even if we stayed together, he couldn't come back to america right now because we're broke... i can stay with my parents but it would be weird if we were both there.

part of me wants to say, fuck it, it's over.

but i'm not willing to completely leave him right now, like forever, because i don't know how much is him and how much is thailand. maybe i do still love him. it would suck to find out too late. but he doesn't like the idea of us spending any time apart and keeps yelling "you're leaving me!" in this melodramatic tone.

and i can feel all the manipulative and abusive tricks he's pulling on me, but there's no way to win. he twists it around so that me "making excuses" about why i wanted to leave, is just as serious as how he treats me. i don't fucking know. he admits he's been absolutely horrible to me for a long time, and sounds genuinely sorry and regretful, and in the same breath say that he can't fix it unless i work on my problem of not telling the truth. he says that this whole time i was saying i couldn't get a job, what i really wanted was to leave thailand. maybe it was both? and whenever i tried to tell him, for months, that i was homesick and didn't like it here, he'd just yell at me, so i gave up on the truth...

circles, circles. my head hurts. he still keeps screaming at me, so loud, and i say, "look at yourself! this is why i'm leaving!" and he says, "i know, i'm absolutely livid and i don't know how to control it." well, what do i say to that?

the thing is that if i stayed, he *would* be better. i know because we've been through this before. i have to actually, seriously leave, or come to the brink of leaving, and then he realizes that yes, it really is that bad, and he changes. we'd probably go to koh phi phi for christmas and do acid and everything would be all warm and fuzzy.

we made this promise when we got back together before, that we wouldn't "break up" unless we'd tried to get professional help first, like counseling or whatever. because we were so miserable apart. and he says i'm breaking that promise. and i say, how can we get counseling in thailand? (i've been thinking about that for months). and he says, "oh, you've already given up. that's what you always do." oh my fucking god.

i think i know what i have to do. whether i was here or in america for christmas, i'd have a great time, it's the part afterwards that bothers me. do i want to live in cold & dark & boring minnesota with my parents and work? or do i want to be in hot, humid, alienating thailand with my abusive husband and work a job i hate? i'm not ready to leave my marriage and he says that's what i'm doing. i can't see the future. there are probably things we could both do to make it better. and even if i say i'm still leaving because of the way he's still treating me, he'll tell me... something.. he always has a comeback. and that is why i have to leave. i have to.

i guess if he can't understand that, then the test is over.

i only have to make it through 15 more hours before i get on that bus. it's killing me. leaving him here on christmas when maybe we could have worked it out. which one of us is breaking our marriage vows more? how lonely will i be in america? will it be like when i left him before and i regretted it, or am i past that, needing someone?

it would be difficult and uncertain to stay here, but it wouldn't give me this pain in my heart. being in thailand with brian gives me more a pain in my soul, but not as intense. when i think about leaving i can feel my heart breaking. literally. it's easier to think about staying here because i'm already used to this pain. but is the pain of leaving actually a sign that i'm doing the wrong thing? or is it just birth pangs?

"if you do not attach values to things, they simply become movements, like two hands closing for example. we need to learn not to tear up like this: it's only movement; movement is beautiful; one flows right into the next, and you can't tell them apart. it's all one thing."