First, I never wrote about this. He emailed me on December 29th, and I wrote back the same day:

hi brian,
sorry i never contacted you. my mind has also been nonstop but it is becoming clearer. i didn't want to write you an email like this but i have been afraid to call, i'm afraid to talk to you. i don't want to put you on hold for two months, but as far as how i feel right now, i don't think we should be together. and it has nothing to do with where we are -- i've been thinking of everything that happened between us, even if we had been in america and able to get counseling and all that.

i've been trying to make lists in my head of pros and cons, and before i even get to the pros i just have all these overwhelming thoughts like "i had to kill our baby so he could go to thailand" and "he holds me down on the bed because he likes to see me squirm".

i've been thinking, what if i could have had the baby, we'd stayed in america, lived in one place, i could have had a normal job and maybe you could have used all the money we saved to start a business, maybe i could have taken some classes or whatever... even if all that had happened... would you have ever stopped yelling at me? telling me i'm abnormal because i don't think of sex the way you do? holding me down on the bed and watching me kick? making sarcastic comments about my past all the time to hurt me? i mean i can't even think of some of these things without crying.

my mind is so much clearer now than when i was in thailand, and it's not because anyone is influencing me. my parents and i haven't had a chance to talk much because people have been visiting continuously, but they are sure that we are staying together and they keep asking me about you. the only person i've talked to is donna. you can write her if you want, i asked and she said she would be fine with that. she is neutral.

i just had to get away because you were making me feel all these different ways, but i KNEW how i felt, i knew how i felt in our relationship, and it wasn't good.

you wrote, "I'm dying inside. I have no one to talk to and my coworkers are avoiding me like the plague. They don't want any part of my misery in their happy world."

that is exactly how i felt the entire time i was in thailand, about you. there's always someone who has to go and fuck up paradise, and everyone hates them for it. i think "the beach" is right. that's why horror movies always take place in tropical places. because people become so obsessed with the dream of paradise that they forget everything else that was important to them, become blinded by the dream.

i do remember the good parts too. but i feel this immense relief, like i escaped from something horrible. i don't know if that's thailand, or you, or both. but you KNOW how much i hate my parents house. don't worry, i'm not going to portland. i'm going to work and save some money for a few months and then try living in some other city where i have friends. i'll see how i do living on my own, and then maybe i will try to move back to portland, but not for a while. i don't want to fuck up this 8 months clean i've got. you have no idea how much easier everything is now that i'm clean... that's another thing. you laughing at me for that. i can't get over that memory.

i really am sorry, i shouldn't have married you, i knew what it was like and i don't know why i thought you would change. you have a lot of angry things to say about me as well, so maybe we are in agreement on this topic. for one thing, i was in no state to make any kind of decision at the time. i couldn't even take care of myself.

at least you are in thailand, which you love. maybe you can enjoy being a teacher and make a new life, since it's so much better for you there than in america.

i finally realized what it is. i don't want everyone worshiping me and saying hello and saying i'm beautiful, just because i'm a white chick who speaks english. it's so meaningless! and depressing, because they can never actually know me.

i want to do something that actually does mean something to me, and have people appreciate me for it, but in a way that means something. not just trying to touch me because i'm white, or saying "hello!" because i have money. i never wanted people to worship me. i never wanted to be the center of attention. i want to meet people who i can talk to about things that matter to me. not just people who fawn over me like i'm royalty. a lot of the expats seem to enjoy that, but i don't. i feel much better back here... even in minnesota.

i do care about you and i'm sorry you're hurting.

love, becky

I hadn't heard from him since. So I opened his blog entry. Somewhere near the beginning, he writes:

"Thailand, 2547, the tsunami came without warning. Thailand, 2549, Becky left without one." [In Thailand, they measure years from the Buddha's birth, so the year that just ended was 2549.] "The devastation, to me, had so much more meaning than all of the unknown lives lost. As much as I love the people here, if [God] asked me if I could choose between this and another hit to these amazing people I'd probably condemn thousands for my own peace of mind. Becky, I know, would never be so selfish to consider such a trade. I think I am. After all, to me it's only news. I've never been one to give a shit about the plight of the faceless. Differences, after all, make the difference. Should I be glad that Becky realized our differences before we tried to accommodate each others? I've always loved her. I always will. I think now that we loved the best about each other. I also think that when we're together we cancel out the differences that make us both so amazing. It's the only thing that explains why I miss her so much now that's she's gone. I look at the pictures of her with her secondhand scarves and accessories and see a free, expressive spirit. Then I look at pictures of her when we were together and don't see any of that."

WOW. I have to say, he has spent a lot of time thinking in the past few weeks. He goes on to admit, finally, that he is a sadist, though not in so many words. He writes of walking to school upset, and seeing a dog get hit by a car, and feeling better. "Becky has said to me so many times that I enjoy hurting her. Fuck, that's preposterous! ...until that dog got hit. Then I was sick because I thought of myself making her feel bad those times. I didn't even go right to school after that. I had to walk it off. I've seen so many fucked up things about myself in the last week that I don't want to be myself. I want to be Becky."

There is a lot of other shit, too -- a child in his class is being sexually molested but he is probably powerless; he got bit by a sting ray and is now taking the painkillers because they make him feel better about his life -- I do feel sorry for him. He even admits that there is no better way I could have handled the situation.

But he stops far, far short of a full realization. He remembers a lot of things that happened, and he'll admit that something he did was wrong, while not seeing that the whole situation was wrong, that there were so many layers of wrongness going on and he is only focusing on one of them. He can see that yelling at me constantly, and other things, hurt me. But what about the fucking big picture?

Also, he keeps mentioning that my emotional stability is one reason he loves me so much -- I can wait out his rage, I don't feed on it like his other lovers did. But that doesn't mean it was ok! Just because I wasn't screaming doesn't mean I was fine! I can't write about this, I'm getting too upset.