June of 2002, I went to meet Orangeblossom in person in Oregon. It was a deeply profound experience, getting to "channel freely' with someone else in person, and there it wound up taking a still-further turn into the bizarre. Focusing on trying to 'reach' Frodo, I found myself 'bringing' Elijah Wood by accident. I since understand that what I was really doing was an uncontrolled mix of free-association and role-playing, but at the time, I thought it was all very real.
Though even I was reluctant at first to believe it could be possible to have channeled a living human being, my doubts were shattered when things I had "channeled" were proven to be true in the DVD release and in interviews that hadn't occurred yet. What had actually happened, of course, is that I already knew a near-fanatical amount about that young man from being a fan to the level I was, and any good profiler can tell you that someone with a gift for getting into the heads of others (like a writer) and enough information can often predict other people's actions to a creepy extent.
Yet from my point of view, it was irrefutable evidence, and this one felt more right than anything previous (no surprise, as I was for the first time role-playing a human male, near my own age, struggling with sexual identity issues and trying to juggle what people expected of him with his true self).
I believed heart and soul that I was channeling the spirit of Elijah Wood. I have tried to explain this away as just "role playing that got out of hand" before, or as "poking the tinhats", but that's just excuse-making to try and hide how phenomenally fucked up I was.
Being Elijah gave me the ability to be a boy, and I clung to it with a fervor I didn't know I was capable of, nor was willing to admit to. I believed that something had clearly gone wrong with the Paladin powers, because "Amy" was less and less willing to return (given the option, I was loathe to be a lesbian girl again) and Elijah was slowly splitting off a second consciousness from himself and taking over my body. This is about as far from reality as it ever got, and lasted through all of 2003. Yes, I thought I was the split-off duplicate channeled soul of Elijah Wood the entire time I was planning and attempting to execute Project Elanor and all the other BitofEarth events.
Yes, that is crazy. Yes, that is fucked up. No, I don't think that absolves me.
As Elijah, I tried to deal with the 'terrible situation' of being split off from myself and trapped in a girl's body (the closest I had yet come to confronting being transgender, as the only other exposure I had to the concept was MsAllegro, who sets off every NO alarm in ANYONE'S book) as best I could, even taking some people 'into my confidence' to 'tell them the truth.' Which was spinning farther and farther away from what anyone else on this planet knew as reality.
I also got BitofEarth into HUGE trouble from a fire triangle of three different major problems, all of which I am owning up to freely.
1: I was relying on a lot of "knowledge" which I wasn't aware I was making up.
This was primarily about the movie industry, publicity, and my "friends" on the cast and crew. Again, using the profiling principle, I was right enough of the time that I got an amazingly long way before it began crumbling around my ears, but in the end, the house (or the real world) always wins.
2. I was at this point completely unraveled from what was and was not true about my own life, and what I believed about myself and my past could change from moment to moment. This did not engender what you would exactly call a spirit of trust, which is something very important when you are working on a project of that magnitude.
3. Aware that I had lost everyone in my previous life - whether that was as Amy OR Elijah - I hung a crazed amount of importance on BitofEarth, the people in it, and them all continuing to like me at all costs. Especially Orangeblossom, whom I had fallen in love with by then.
In order to try and maintain this, I took on ridiculously more than I could handle.
If someone wanted it, I promised it. If I could find a way to do it - lie, cheat, hook, or crook - I did it, or if I couldn't, I came up with an excuse that made it not my fault.
I delegated my hugely overloaded plate to others, but when they weren't happy with the work, or if something went wrong, I took it back onto myself rather than confront them or drive them, even if I already had more than I could handle.
I considered the success of Orangeblossom's and everyone else's whims at BitofEarth to be the stuff of life or dearth, and had completely lost all perspective. And if you're fighting for your life, not a convention or organization, you'll do anything, say anything, promise anything, and prop yourself up on a house of cards hoping you can find glue before the wind blows.
Well, as everyone knows, the wind blew big time and I didn't have any glue. Seeing the sure destruction of TentMoot and the exposure of the lies I had told to try and pull it off, I tried to kill myself.
I am actually very thankful for this, as the mandatory rest in the mental hospital was my first step towards re-connecting with reality.
No, BitofEarth was not a scam. I was never trying to get anything out of anyone, and I have never profited so much as a dime from any cast or crewmember, nor anyone associated with New Line Cinema.
As a matter of fact, Orangeblossom and myself spent ourselves into destitution and still OWE about $1,200 to Jeanine in money she spent on us because we were pumping every dime into BoE, and about $100 to the Kiwi's for money they spent on themselves because we had abjectly nothing. I was never trying to con anyone, or to get anything out of it, even attention, as anyone who was in that inner circle can recall that I ducked the spotlight as though it were poison.
All I wanted was to make a lot of people happy, but I did it in a way that was maladjusted to say the least, and with the facts as truly beyond the bizarre as they are, I can certainly understand and hold no malice against those who could see no possibility but a deliberate scam.
After the fall of BitofEarth, I tried a home-based business selling credit-card readers with a guy who I'd met at the mental home, but he WAS a scam artist, and I was soon standing on the sidewalk in San Dimas with Diamond, Orangeblossom, an eviction notice, and not a red cent to my name. Begging at gas stations for money and gas to get us there, we made it into Hollywood, where we crashed on a friend's couch for a few days until we could scrape together the money taking pictures as costumed characters on the Boulevard to get a cheap motel room. We lived hand to mouth that way for all of 2004 and the first half of 2005, trying to repair our lives. The maelstrom that destroyed BitofEarth, horrifying and painful as it was, was, in the end, I believe, the work of God.
It also destroyed the 'duplicate Elijah' and I had to start over looking myself hard in the face. It was about this time that we separated from Diamond, who had begun having fits of temper where she would bite and attack us and herself, as well as stealing alcohol. We have heard several stories about her going through quite the litany of roommates with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part, but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. I haven't seen her in over 3 years, and I hope that she is well and has gotten the help she so clearly needed.
Terribly afraid at being pinned as a con artist when I hadn't stolen from anyone, and seized with panic attacks at the thought of being made to live as Amy Player, a girl, I tried to adopt a new identity so that I could sort myself out while still living as a male.
No movie stars this time, no big deal, just a drifting 'actor, writer, jack-of-all-trades' with a mysterious past he wouldn't talk about.
I got a lot of therapy, found out about transgender, saved up money, got an apartment, and started looking at building up a long-term life again.
In October, an opportunity presented us to move to Toronto to help manage a small cafe and live in an attached apartment as roommates with the owners. We felt that this was a perfect opportunity, as not only could we fully move back into the 'normal' workforce, but we could get a fresh start and be really honest with people, as we didn't have pre-existent relationships there created under a need to hide my insanity or my gender situation.
We told people that we were moving out East, flying to New York (this was true, flying to Buffalo and meeting our employers there saved over half on tickets) so that we could leave that far behind and live like normal people. God, however, does not allow Jonah to flee Ninevah. The Toronto opportunity was a scam, and we were stranded in Buffalo. In early February. Of this year. Nothing makes you look at your life like twenty degrees below freezing windchill.
I had already become a Christian again over the course of my therapy, once I knew that I was just another example of God's infinite diversity and not some terrible creature, but at the border, it seemed like He was speaking to me.
****You can't run. You can change, and you have changed, you can grow up, and you have grown up, you can mature, and you have matured, and you can go on to live a normal life, but you must deal with what you have done in the past. I may be able to wipe your sins clean as though they never happened, but that does not absolve you of needing to face those you sinned against.*****
… … …
So we called Orangeblossom's mother, and my parents, and we have reconnected with our families. I am home now, as I write this, patching things up with my parents, and at the end of this month will be moving on to a regular job and apartment with Orangeblossom and our little pet bird.
Our relationship has grown from two severely screwed up people clinging to each other to something amazingly precious and tried by fire, and we hope to spend the rest of our lives together.
I do not expect forgiveness or absolution from any of you, but I do ask of you one thing. Please do not try to destroy me any further unless I warrant it.
If I am caught with so much as a toe out of place in a charity, organization, business, or online, feel free to light the pitchforks, but as for the past...I beg you. I was little more than a child, and a profoundly messed up one.
There was a police investigation, charges were never filed, civil fines were paid. I am currently trying to set aside as much as I can per month of my paycheck (as soon as I have one) to pay off the last of my financial obligations to Jeanine, but I am really and truly trying to be a healthy and law-abiding grown man, no matter how disastrously crazy I was as a young girl. Please, please...you have my social security number, my date of birth, my other vital stats, many of you.
I live in fear every day that I will find things done in my name for spite, that I will get a job only to find people parked outside my office yelling for my head, that years from now I will adopt a baby and have people organizing an internet campaign to call Social Services and get it taken...that my life will be ruined because in 2003, I tried to organize a fan convention when I should have spent that year in a mental hospital.
I don't want your forgiveness. I'm willing to accept your anger, your hate. I don't think this will just go away. I know that the written word endures, that the things I wrote can never be taken off of the internet thanks to Google Cache and the Wayback Machine, and that there will always be a book out there commemorating what I have done, and what people thought of me because of that. My lowest and darkest moments will always be public sport and satire, because I lied, and that is a sin, and to sin is both to hurt others and to bring their retribution upon you.
I am not trying to escape, indeed, I am confronting it all head-on and with what I hope you can see is soul-baring honesty.
Comments are not locked. I will even answer your questions on specific matters, and answer them in full honesty, as I know that however lengthy, this has just been an overview.
I have stopped running. I have confessed my sins. I await the consequences. I deserve no forgiveness.
I only ask to be allowed to have a second chance at life, not at your lives.
Re: Amy Player Deleted Apology, Part 2
and there it wound up taking a still-further turn into the bizarre. Focusing on trying to 'reach' Frodo, I found myself 'bringing' Elijah Wood by accident. I since understand that what I was really doing was an uncontrolled mix of free-association and role-playing, but at the time, I thought it was all very real.
Though even I was reluctant at first to believe it could be possible to have channeled a living human being, my doubts were shattered when things I had "channeled" were proven to be true in the DVD release and in interviews that hadn't occurred yet. What had actually happened, of course, is that I already knew a near-fanatical amount about that young man from being a fan to the level I was, and any good profiler can tell you that someone with a gift for getting into the heads of others (like a writer) and enough information can often predict other people's actions to a creepy extent.
Yet from my point of view, it was irrefutable evidence, and this one felt more right than anything previous (no surprise, as I was for the first time role-playing a human male, near my own age, struggling with sexual identity issues and trying to juggle what people expected of him with his true self).
I believed heart and soul that I was channeling the spirit of Elijah Wood. I have tried to explain this away as just "role playing that got out of hand" before, or as "poking the tinhats", but that's just excuse-making to try and hide how phenomenally fucked up I was.
Being Elijah gave me the ability to be a boy, and I clung to it with a fervor I didn't know I was capable of, nor was willing to admit to. I believed that something had clearly gone wrong with the Paladin powers, because "Amy" was less and less willing to return (given the option, I was loathe to be a lesbian girl again) and Elijah was slowly splitting off a second consciousness from himself and taking over my body. This is about as far from reality as it ever got, and lasted through all of 2003. Yes, I thought I was the split-off duplicate channeled soul of Elijah Wood the entire time I was planning and attempting to execute Project Elanor and all the other BitofEarth events.
Yes, that is crazy.
Yes, that is fucked up.
No, I don't think that absolves me.
As Elijah, I tried to deal with the 'terrible situation' of being split off from myself and trapped in a girl's body (the closest I had yet come to confronting being transgender, as the only other exposure I had to the concept was MsAllegro, who sets off every NO alarm in ANYONE'S book) as best I could, even taking some people 'into my confidence' to 'tell them the truth.' Which was spinning farther and farther away from what anyone else on this planet knew as reality.
I also got BitofEarth into HUGE trouble from a fire triangle of three different major problems, all of which I am owning up to freely.
1: I was relying on a lot of "knowledge" which I wasn't aware I was making up.
This was primarily about the movie industry, publicity, and my "friends" on the cast and crew. Again, using the profiling principle, I was right enough of the time that I got an amazingly long way before it began crumbling around my ears, but in the end, the house (or the real world) always wins.
2. I was at this point completely unraveled from what was and was not true about my own life, and what I believed about myself and my past could change from moment to moment. This did not engender what you would exactly call a spirit of trust, which is something very important when you are working on a project of that magnitude.
3. Aware that I had lost everyone in my previous life - whether that was as Amy OR Elijah - I hung a crazed amount of importance on BitofEarth, the people in it, and them all continuing to like me at all costs. Especially Orangeblossom, whom I had fallen in love with by then.
In order to try and maintain this, I took on ridiculously more than I could handle.
If someone wanted it, I promised it. If I could find a way to do it - lie, cheat, hook, or crook - I did it, or if I couldn't, I came up with an excuse that made it not my fault.
I delegated my hugely overloaded plate to others, but when they weren't happy with the work, or if something went wrong, I took it back onto myself rather than confront them or drive them, even if I already had more than I could handle.
I considered the success of Orangeblossom's and everyone else's whims at BitofEarth to be the stuff of life or dearth, and had completely lost all perspective. And if you're fighting for your life, not a convention or organization, you'll do anything, say anything, promise anything, and prop yourself up on a house of cards hoping you can find glue before the wind blows.
Well, as everyone knows, the wind blew big time and I didn't have any glue. Seeing the sure destruction of TentMoot and the exposure of the lies I had told to try and pull it off, I tried to kill myself.
I am actually very thankful for this, as the mandatory rest in the mental hospital was my first step towards re-connecting with reality.
No, BitofEarth was not a scam. I was never trying to get anything out of anyone, and I have never profited so much as a dime from any cast or crewmember, nor anyone associated with New Line Cinema.
As a matter of fact, Orangeblossom and myself spent ourselves into destitution and still OWE about $1,200 to Jeanine in money she spent on us because we were pumping every dime into BoE, and about $100 to the Kiwi's for money they spent on themselves because we had abjectly nothing. I was never trying to con anyone, or to get anything out of it, even attention, as anyone who was in that inner circle can recall that I ducked the spotlight as though it were poison.
All I wanted was to make a lot of people happy,
but I did it in a way that was maladjusted to say the least, and with the facts as truly beyond the bizarre as they are, I can certainly understand and hold no malice against those who could see no possibility but a deliberate scam.
After the fall of BitofEarth, I tried a home-based business selling credit-card readers with a guy who I'd met at the mental home, but he WAS a scam artist, and I was soon standing on the sidewalk in San Dimas with Diamond, Orangeblossom, an eviction notice, and not a red cent to my name. Begging at gas stations for money and gas to get us there, we made it into Hollywood, where we crashed on a friend's couch for a few days until we could scrape together the money taking pictures as costumed characters on the Boulevard to get a cheap motel room.
We lived hand to mouth that way for all of 2004 and the first half of 2005, trying to repair our lives. The maelstrom that destroyed BitofEarth, horrifying and painful as it was, was, in the end, I believe, the work of God.
It also destroyed the 'duplicate Elijah' and I had to start over looking myself hard in the face. It was about this time that we separated from Diamond, who had begun having fits of temper where she would bite and attack us and herself, as well as stealing alcohol. We have heard several stories about her going through quite the litany of roommates with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part, but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. I haven't seen her in over 3 years, and I hope that she is well and has gotten the help she so clearly needed.
Terribly afraid at being pinned as a con artist when I hadn't stolen from anyone, and seized with panic attacks at the thought of being made to live as Amy Player, a girl, I tried to adopt a new identity so that I could sort myself out while still living as a male.
No movie stars this time, no big deal, just a drifting 'actor, writer, jack-of-all-trades' with a mysterious past he wouldn't talk about.
I got a lot of therapy, found out about transgender, saved up money, got an apartment, and started looking at building up a long-term life again.
In October, an opportunity presented us to move to Toronto to help manage a small cafe and live in an attached apartment as roommates with the owners. We felt that this was a perfect opportunity, as not only could we fully move back into the 'normal' workforce, but we could get a fresh start and be really honest with people, as we didn't have pre-existent relationships there created under a need to hide my insanity or my gender situation.
We told people that we were moving out East, flying to New York (this was true, flying to Buffalo and meeting our employers there saved over half on tickets) so that we could leave that far behind and live like normal people.
God, however, does not allow Jonah to flee Ninevah. The Toronto opportunity was a scam, and we were stranded in Buffalo. In early February. Of this year. Nothing makes you look at your life like twenty degrees below freezing windchill.
I had already become a Christian again over the course of my therapy, once I knew that I was just another example of God's infinite diversity and not some terrible creature,
but at the border, it seemed like He was speaking to me.
****You can't run. You can change, and you have changed, you can grow up, and you have grown up, you can mature, and you have matured, and you can go on to live a normal life, but you must deal with what you have done in the past. I may be able to wipe your sins clean as though they never happened, but that does not absolve you of needing to face those you sinned against.*****
…
…
…
So we called Orangeblossom's mother, and my parents, and we have reconnected with our families. I am home now, as I write this, patching things up with my parents, and at the end of this month will be moving on to a regular job and apartment with Orangeblossom and our little pet bird.
Our relationship has grown from two severely screwed up people clinging to each other to something amazingly precious and tried by fire, and we hope to spend the rest of our lives together.
I do not expect forgiveness or absolution from any of you, but I do ask of you one thing. Please do not try to destroy me any further unless I warrant it.
If I am caught with so much as a toe out of place in a charity, organization, business, or online, feel free to light the pitchforks, but as for the past...I beg you. I was little more than a child, and a profoundly messed up one.
There was a police investigation, charges were never filed, civil fines were paid. I am currently trying to set aside as much as I can per month of my paycheck (as soon as I have one) to pay off the last of my financial obligations to Jeanine, but I am really and truly trying to be a healthy and law-abiding grown man, no matter how disastrously crazy I was as a young girl. Please, please...you have my social security number, my date of birth, my other vital stats, many of you.
I live in fear every day that I will find things done in my name for spite, that I will get a job only to find people parked outside my office yelling for my head, that years from now I will adopt a baby and have people organizing an internet campaign to call Social Services and get it taken...that my life will be ruined because in 2003, I tried to organize a fan convention when I should have spent that year in a mental hospital.
I don't want your forgiveness. I'm willing to accept your anger, your hate. I don't think this will just go away. I know that the written word endures, that the things I wrote can never be taken off of the internet thanks to Google Cache and the Wayback Machine,
and that there will always be a book out there commemorating what I have done, and what people thought of me because of that. My lowest and darkest moments will always be public sport and satire, because I lied, and that is a sin, and to sin is both to hurt others and to bring their retribution upon you.
I am not trying to escape, indeed, I am confronting it all head-on and with what I hope you can see is soul-baring honesty.
Comments are not locked. I will even answer your questions on specific matters, and answer them in full honesty, as I know that however lengthy, this has just been an overview.
I have stopped running. I have confessed my sins. I await the consequences. I deserve no forgiveness.
I only ask to be allowed to have a second chance at life,
not at your lives.
God Bless You
Sincerely
Just Me