Connections, by Gail Klock

This is an extremely difficult topic for me to write about because it reaches into the deepest places of pain within my psyche. There have been many times in my life when I have felt extremely isolated, lacking a connection to anyone. I was the little child in kindergarten who chose to work on jigsaw puzzles during chose time because it was the only activity which involved no interaction with others, all the time hearing the other kids laughing and playing and wanting to be with them. In college, when on a camping trip with a class, I laid awake all night feeling totally isolated with others all around me, I felt like I was losing my mind. It was one of the longest nights in my life. The terror I was feeling was due to the fact I felt isolated, but I was too afraid to admit it. In both instances, and others like them, if I had only been able to reach out and say help me, I would have been okay. But I had learned to lock my fears away, I knew they were not to be hung out like dirty laundry. I came from a very stoic German family which mistakenly didn’t ask for help, even when it was needed. There was instead a false sense of pride in handling, or appearing to handle, all life’s trauma’s by ourselves. The reality was we all needed help, especially when Karl died at the age of two. Of course back in the fifties this type of help was not advocated or available. My dad’s yelling at my mom not to cry on the way to Karl’s funeral was not because he was a heartless bastard, it was because he was such a sensitive man, who loved this little child so much and his wife and his other children and he couldn’t deal with his own pain, much less take on and help the rest of us deal with ours, which he felt was his responsibility because he was the man of the house. These feelings never left him, they choked him until the day he died. When he was in hospice, a few weeks after my mother had unexpectedly died, he lamented to me he felt so guilty and helpless because he wasn’t there for her when she passed away. He was referring to the evening of the night when she died in her sleep. She had collapsed in the bathroom and he didn’t have the physical strength to help her up so he had to call the neighbors to help him get her up and to bed. He didn’t realize he had been there for her; he had nearly died the day after Christmas, just a month before, but after a week stay in the hospital he unexpectedly made it home. She had told all of us that she was not going to let my dad die first, she couldn’t handle the death of another person she loved so much. She prayed nightly, and I think quit taking her heart meds, for this to be the case. She died precisely as she prayed for, in her own bed, in her own home, next to her husband. My dad was there for her, by making the call for help to the neighbors, he provided the means to her prayers.

It was as this four year old child that I began to surmise that when in pain you don’t cry and you don’t ask for help. This was solidified further by my mother’s inability to provide emotional support to me or my brother due to her own debilitating grief. This was the point in my life when I began to experience a lack of connection with others. This was triggered once again when I was in college and became aware of my homosexuality. I instinctively knew, as did my girlfriend, not to reveal our relationship to anyone else. And in the hiding of who I was I was once again isolated from society, I could sense the darkness beginning to overtake me but I didn’t want to ask for help and I doubted there was any to be found. After all I had learned in my psychology class that homosexuality was a mental illness and I couldn’t face the label of being mentally ill. This was further exacerbated by the fact my grandmother had been in the state mental hospital in Pueblo and no one in the family understood why. None of us ever knew the diagnoses – but I did know from my visits to the hospital with my mom that I didn’t want to be sent there. It was very frightening to me as a child to realize my grandmother was locked up. So to avoid a similar fate, I ironically locked myself up, tighter and tighter. The longer I stayed in the closet the more I felt disconnected from mainstream society.

When I experience this feeling of disconnect I am unable to feel, it is as though I am locked away from everything, including myself. It is sometimes difficult to access the key which frees me from my emotional shackles and allows me to deal with the feelings which I am blocking. I have learned through years of therapy that I need to let myself feel the underlying feelings, which are either sadness or fear. It has taken me years to learn this and also to learn these negative feelings are not permanent and that it is normal to experience them.  I know this and most of the time I can do it, but I wish I could do it all the time and more quickly.

I have also learned that life presents us with lots of self-fulfilling moments, that is to say if I go into a situation expecting it to be enjoyable and thinking people will like me and want to connect with me, they do. And likewise if I anticipate the opposite I generally leave thinking I had been right, I was going to have an unenjoyable time, I wasn’t going to connect with others, and I didn’t. It’s that old bit of seeing a group of people laughing and looking at you. You might think, “They’re all looking at me and think I look fat in my outfit”, or you might think “They look like a fun group of people who like to laugh, I think I’ll join them.”

Sunday mornings for the past twelve years, minus a few months here and there, and Monday afternoons for the past two and a half years, have been an immensely important source of connection for me. I know when I walk into the Golden Recreation Center on Sundays and the Center on Monday afternoons I will feel connected with whomever I encounter there, be it a woman with a basketball or a fellow storyteller with a story. Feeling a sense of connection and the inherent sense of acceptance by my friends is what makes life worth living.

© 17 April 2017 

About the Author 

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents. Upon completion of high school, I attended Colorado State University majoring in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and Colorado School of Mines.

While coaching at Mines my long-term partner and I had two daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by coaching, I resigned from this position and got my elementary education certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County Schools for ten years. As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.

As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.