My Experience at the Program

In my first post about Adam, I mentioned I would tell you about my experience at the program, and most important, my experience after the program ended. I will try my best to explain it now. Hopefully this confession about how I felt will provide us with insight on how Adam felt.

I suppose I will start at the beginning. September 6, 2007: A group of 32 students meets at JFK International Airport in New York and boards a Swiss Air flight to Geneva, Switzerland. Nobody knows anybody (except for the other student(s) who came from our school with us, which was not true for everyone).

We arrive in Switzerland and bus to our town and move into the little hotel we will be living at for the next 4 months. We are also assigned roommate pairings. I later found out from a teacher that the pairings were based on who would be least comfortable together. They did this to force us to branch out. Fortunately, my roommate and I became very good friends rather quickly.

I arrived in the program a bit unsure of myself. I was beginning to wonder why I even applied. Of course, I remembered that I had not wanted to apply, but rather my brother wanted to, and then backed out, so I took his place.

However, within 2 weeks, all my fears had completely dissolved. I swiftly became friends with just about everyone. Mind you, this was a new experience for me. Never had I fit in so well with a group of 32 people. I had friends back home, and my friend group was somewhat large, but I never felt as close with all of my people back home as I did with these people who I had only known for 2 weeks.

This feeling grew throughout the semester, and I came to regard my group of 32 students as something of a family. I liked everyone and everyone liked me. This was the closest I ever came to being 'popular' in my life, and it was a nice feeling. I wasn't the popular jerk who you all know from your high school. I was just the guy that everyone liked.

But I wasn't just friends with everyone, I was best friends with everyone. It was amazing.

Then, it ended. The day was Thursday, December 20, 2007. I will never forget that day because I think it was one of the saddest days of my life. I know that sounds pathetic. “Oh, poor Jason. His saddest day is when his frolic through Switzerland ended. Boo hoo.” Of course, that is what people say when they don't understand what the program meant to me and how hard it was to come home.

The program was especially meaningful for me because for the first time in my life, I was somewhere where I felt like I belonged. This is not to be confused with feeling wanted. I love my family and friends here, and I feel wanted and have always felt this way, but feeling like I belong is something different.

It actually took me 1 year to finally realize why I was so sad after coming home. I missed that feeling of belonging. I missed have many best friends who I could chat with for hours. On top of that, it was incredibly hard to abruptly say goodbye to so many good friends. I think I met some of my closest friends there, and I never got over the shock of having to part ways.

It's true that we have reunions and occasional get-togethers, but I knew that upon leaving, the whole group of 32 people would never be together again.

Furthermore, I knew that many of my friends would change. I guess this is partly true with Adam. His behavior changed, but I am happy to say that when I saw him at the reunion, he was still the same Adam that was my best friend. This gives me hope for being able to become his friend again.

1 year after leaving, I recognized that I missed the program so much because it was the one place I felt truly accepted. I did not come out as gay while there, but I think that had I come out, everyone would have accepted me.

I felt like I was able to act in the way I chose and not have to worry about what people thought. Maybe some people suspected I was gay, but I knew that would not change their opinion of me.

Never before had I been in a place where I felt completely accepted and comfortable with who I am. I actually remember consciously realizing that I could not act that way when I got home because people would not receive it well. This was possibly one of the first times I consciously shut my closet door, and it did not feel good.

I suppose my depression arose from feeling more trapped. It was like tasting paradise and then being thrown back into the inferno, which was so much more torturous because I knew how perfect life could truly be.

In addition to all this, I could not turn to any of my friends from home for help. I don't think many of them would have liked me comparing home to hell. They were so excited to have me back that they simply could not understand my sadness. They were willing to give me a week or two to recover from the shock of losing friends, but that was it.

They simply failed to understand how close I had become with everyone from the program. On top of that, I could not explain my feeling of being trapped because that would entail coming out, and I just was not ready for that.

The only people who I could turn to were my friends from the program, and I think that most of them reintegrated to their schools fairly well. In fact, the only people who had real difficulty were Adam, Sally, and myself. I would have talked to Sally more, but she had entered a long-distance relationship with my former roommate, so she talked to him all the time. I don't know why I didn't talk to Adam more, but I just didn't.

Part of me didn't want to talk to people from the program because it hurt so much. During the phone conversation, I would be very happy and revert to my old self, but after the phone call ended, I was always left with this sense of emptiness or loss. In fact, I still get that feeling.

So, I felt trapped, and I felt alone.

Now, let's look at Adam. I have gotten over my initial depression, which is good, but it took 1 year, and I wonder if Adam has climbed out as well. I know he really struggled with the return.

I know that he lost many of his friends, something that happened to me, but on a much smaller scale. He also once told a friend of mine that he did not like to call people from the program because it hurt too much. I suspect that he felt very alone.

He came out, so I don't think he felt trapped in the same way I did, but I wonder if he felt isolated and alone. However, I know that he was rather comfortable with his sexuality when he came out, so he may not have felt this way.

So, how can we take this knowledge and best utilize it to help him? Well, I actually don't know. Most of this information is old, and might be useless. However, I think you all are right. The best thing to do is to call him and try to be his friend. No need to bring up any thing about what he does. I just want to be friends.

Funny enough, a friend from the program called me while I was writing this post. She and I had not spoken since December, so it was great to hear from her. The conversation started out a bit awkward, but it soon picked up speed. We talked for 1 hour and 45 minutes. It was great and we spent a lot of the time gossiping/reminiscing about the program. I was so happy to hear from her. Of course, now I have that sad, empty feeling after the end of the call. I haven't felt like this in a long time. I feel awful...