Hello there all of yous out there. I'm Erik, and if you're wondering why you haven't really seen anything from or about me before, it's because I'm not exactly the most "core" Tribal member. Yes, I am a member, I did spend tons of time with them, and they were some of my best friends in college (I even roomed with Chris my senior year), but it was never the place where I totally "belonged". That being said, the Tribe was a hugely important part of my life, and I can't imagine college or my life now without it.
I was a bit of a latecomer to the Tribe. I'm a year ahead most of the other members, so I had a full year to make friends at school before the Tribe even ever met each other. I had a great group of friends my freshman year, but that was heavily based on all of us living on the same floor, and by the time my sophomore year rolled around, that group had splintered into two "factions", with me ending up not really a part of either. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I started falling into a new (and much smaller) group of friends, but as I was the only male, it sometimes made things a little bit difficult. The girls often wanted to just sit with each other at meals and have "girl time". That fall, there was a "fall ball" hosted by the dorm those girls lived in, so I went along with them, but they wanted to ride over just with each other to spend more of that "girl time" together, and when they decided to cut out early, I was left awkwardly at an off campus event with nobody I really knew at all. But still, they were very close friends, and I became best friends with one of the girls in the group. Towards the end of my sophomore year though, she began to feel like our friendship was too much like a relationship (and she'd just gotten out of her very first relationship with an extremely messy breakup), so after Easter break, I came back to campus to find my best friend ignoring and avoiding me with absolutely zero explanation, and it made it nearly impossible to spend time with those friends.
I felt very lost and stranded. Practically none of the friendships I'd built up for two years were there for me anymore, and it was already an emotionally difficult time because of the way my best friend was treating me. So I turned to the Tribe.
Going back a little, I had become acquainted with Tribe through my sophomore year, although I didn't know them as such at the time. Chris was on my floor, and we'd started talking after I was playing some Estonian music (Kerli, if I remember correctly) and he came in to talk about it. After having a difficult time finding actors for my first video for my digital video class, Chris offered to act, and suggested Lane as my actress. The video went quite well, and during the filming, I recruited Lane and Maya for the video that ended up becoming my final for that class. I ended up making a total of six videos with Tribal members acting in some capacity (Chris and Lane each appearing in four, Joe and Gordon in two, and Maya, Jackie, and Chad in one apiece). All in all, I only made one video in college that didn't feature any of the Tribe (made both before and after I really became part of the group). [It's interesting to note that almost all of my college videos deal with themes of rejection, which I didn't even realize until later.]
So, I'd reached this point where I was very alone and didn't really have many people I could turn to. One day, I was going up for a meal, and decided I was tired of eating alone, and took a chance and sat with the Tribe, of whom I was only really acquainted with a few. They were incredibly friendly and welcoming, and readily accepted me as one of them.
I'm an extrovert though, and I made a lot of friends easily. The girl who'd been avoiding me eventually realized she was being silly and we made up (a process which repeated itself our senior year at a significantly more emotionally intense level [although we've since made up again, this time for good]). I made friends with more people on my floor, and their friends, and even other people around the school. I couldn't just abandon any of my different friends groups, so I spent time semi-equally between them all. I think, in total, I hung out with about 4-5 groups of friends (some of whom bled into each other a little bit). While this allowed me to have a lot of friends, it prevented me from becoming really a "core" member of any of them. I also never really felt like I totally belonged with any of them. Don't get me wrong, I got along great with everyone, and had many individual friendships that were very close, but I always felt like a little bit of an outsider with every group. I also had a very different role to play in these friend groups than I was used to back home. I ran with a pretty wild group of friends back home at the time, whose activities included licking a 10 tab strip of acid and going to work, and doing shrooms and coke at an anime convention (neither of which I was a part of or even present for). So, needless to say, back home I was the super cautious and conservative one, the kind who would say "I don't know if we should be doing this guys", but at Houghton (and especially in the Tribe), I was the super liberal, wild, party animal. I don't know the direct impact of that on my feeling of belonging, but that combined with my own insecurities, loneliness, shyness, and low self esteem made me feel like I didn't really belong.
But the Tribe always did their best to include me, even though I wasn't always around for some of the big events, asked to come to everything that happened, or even attending the same church as them (which I think was also a big part of me not really being a "core" member). I'm still a Tribal member though, and I have some amazing friends in the group (who I really need to catch up with, I miss you guys!). Most importantly though, the Tribe was there for me at a time when I was lost and needed rescuing, and they opened themselves up and brought me into their fold. I can't imagine life without them, and they're some of the tightest knit friends I've ever met. They're all incredible people, and I'm incredibly blessed to have all of them in my life. The Tribe is the real deal, and I look forward to following their adventures here along with all of you too.
Depending on Chris' discretion, I hope to be back again sometime to contribute some more. I have an extensive knowledge of and passion for music and movies (some of which I shared with the Tribe, including a somewhat poorly conceived viewing of Battle Royale on a classroom projector), so maybe I'll get to talk about those or something. Who knows?
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