i've tried everything i can think of

to salvage this relationship. At what point do you just walk away?

Again a metaphor is trying to form: Picturing myself chipping away, chipping away at the mortar between the bricks of a very solid wall, hoping for any slightest ray of sunlight, any tiniest beam of hope. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. But I keep trying, til my fingernails are bloody nubs and my fingers can hardly move.

Why do I keep struggling with something so futile? Am I trapped? Is there no other way out?

No - I feel a breeze, and when I turn around, I see a door, standing open. I am free to leave at any time.

But what if I leave? Will I be able to come back in? I don't know. It feels like one of those nightmares where doors appear and disappear, hallways stretch and narrow and veer wildly, unpredictably, with many doors to the unknown scattered along the way. Stairways rise crazily into nowhere, or sometimes loop back on themselves, Escher-like; elevators zoom frantically past my intended stop, or plummet madly into the depths, and I am unable to ever get where I am trying to go.

I am in a cell (not of my own devising?) which is so, a cell, that is, because - why - put the words out there and see if they make sense - the other person? can only think in terms of bricks and blocks (echoes of Dr. Seuss, oops).

And the cell (started to think cage, but try to stick with one metaphor, see where it goes) is a symbol for the relationship, which is a trap from which I cannot escape.

I don't know where this is trying to go. I just have to put the words down for now and hope that more will become clear later.

(this is about my mother, I've got that much so far. Feel like an anthropologist exhuming the contents of my own memories - can't see what's coming, don't know what this thing is that's being exposed as I carefully scrape away the dust of centuries [ok, decades :-)]) (maybe I should change my name to Parenthetical Thinker.)

And then I imagine I'm taking all the carefully untangled strands of my SELF that I've slowly, painstakingly un-knotted from this gigantic, incomprehensible wadded-up mess of confusion that I've been caught in for so long, and slowly, carefully, gently, lovingly twisting them together into a single strand of being, a single, continuous self that makes sense to me. Fuckin' A!!!! Cool, it's like I finally understand the shrink concept of True Self/False Self at a gut level, beyond the words that I've read so many times - I can actually feel it!!! Woo-hoo, as my SIL would say.)

And the bricks, and the mortar, those are her metaphors, I don't have to use them. Hence the door. But for her (she's literally described her experience of relationships this way) it's a wall. When she described it in the past I always pictured this wall that was taller than I could see over, stretching away in both directions as far as I could see.

I would stand there, in my mental image, with my fists on my hips in frustration and perplexity, puzzled and irritated that my stupid mother was so irrational, juvenile, and most of all, depended on me, her child, to get us out of this mess.

No more, babe. You're on your own behind that wall. YOU built it, YOU get to live there. (Somehow The Cask of Amontillado keeps popping into my head - not sure if there's any relevance, other than the similarity of somebody voluntarily bricking themselves up into a tiny space.)

And that's how I envision it, from my side - it's as if she's built this tiny room for me, that this is all I get, no more. If I want a relationship with her, I must be content with bread (dried-out crusts) and water. (Puritanical punitive mindset poisons even those of us never been Catholics. As the parlance has it, WTF???)

(this process makes me think of reading tea leaves or something - looking for anything, anything at all, that will lead me in the 'right' direction, meaning, out of this frickin' maze. Tarot, ouija board, seances. I'm blindfolded, in the dark, trying to find my way. And yet, there is light! A crack is appearing! Will she make it? Will she escape?)

I never know whether something's made a dent in her head or not - I'll say something mean one day, and the next she acts like it never happened. We don't do apologies in our family (or, at least, no one besides me does. And I'm learning how to give them up). We just sweep, sweep, sweep that guilt, that shame, that anger under the rug. (now the lump under the carpet is beginning to resemble an elephant. And it's fricking moving, it's taking on a life of its own...)

Why do I want to come back into this tiny cell, anyway? Why can't I just walk away?

Because it's my mother. Everything I need is in here (or so says my psyche, at the deepest, darkest, most primitive lizard-brain, gut level) - food, shelter, love

wait, wait, I interrupt. Love is not here. This cell is devoid of love. Remember the turnip from which blood cannot be squoze? Or the stone? Same deal. No different. You gonna starve to death if you stay in here, sweet pea. (yeah, the metaphor needs some work. Lots of loose ends.)