Is he playing games ?? Or being abusive ?? Idk what to think ??

My boyfriend is an angry person and he is mentally/verbally abusive sometimes and he’s admitted to being manipulative and “possessive”. Yesterday, had an attitude the whole day. Anything I asked him about or said to him made him mad and he was making little comments and being a dick. At one point, in public, I thought he was starting to calm down (he was smiling at me and just casually talking) so I playfully was telling him to shut up and he started screaming. I walked away and started crying. He texted me and asked if I was still there or not so that he knew how we were getting home. I told him I was crying and that I wanted to talk to my best friend. He said “yeah I made another girl cry before too” “idc talk to her” “I only do if I feel disrespected” but also apologized. Then said he’d tell her himself to show he needs to let me go. We went back and forth and he was saying how he stopped feeling bad about yelling at me. Then he kind of calmed down and was saying he did still feel bad and mentioned his childhood w women. But then said he feels like we’re toxic and have poor communication and it makes him “deeply mad”. So I thought he was going to end it. But literally RIGHT AFTER, started being overly nice to me and even stayed up really late into the night to spend time with me. I thought maybe he was just trying to make up for what happened but it just gave me a weird gut feeling