Help Finn Escape Idaho for a Safer Future

Howdy, my name is Finn, also known as OFJ online through my art profiles where I post my character illustrations and projects as an aspiring graphic novelist.

I am a 22 transgender artist trying to find a better life by escaping rural Idaho, a hostile and unsafe place to live as a trans person. As well as a place lacking the means and opportunity for me to begin my life- in finding community, building a career, and following the pursuits of my dreams.

I am starting this fund for, as I am fleeing the state, I am in need of a car to help me commute to work and support myself as I settle into an unfamiliar city. This is a very important tool to build and maintain my life out there. Something that I cannot currently afford, and need to acquire as soon as I can.

Any donation would be more than immensely appreciated, it will help me to begin my life at all, where I can be myself, be with others who accept me, support myself financially, and progress beyond the confines of a place that does not want me here. That limits me in all ways. My life, my future, my safety, and my happiness. I want more than this, and I know that there is more than this out there.

I ask sincerely and deeply for any support to help me reach and achieve my goals. Aid me on the journey I am on and the life I am trying to create, and escaping life in Idaho, which isn't a life at all.

There is a way out, but I need help to reach it. Any help at all, it would mean the world.

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I am leaving Idaho for many reasons, a huge one being where I am it is an incredibly unwelcoming place for a queer person, to put it quite mildly. My life here has been stained by a long personal history of social rejection and hostility on the basis of my queer identity. Not only the communities and people directly around me, but just this past July the state itself revoked gender affirming care for state funded healthcare or clinics.

Being someone on state healthcare and going to state funded sliding scale clinics because of being low income, I entirely lost access to HRT with the legislative change. Putting my transition on hold, watching my body retreat back near the painful place I've started. Suspending my joy, relief, and well-being as a trans person once again.

There is concerted effort here to make living as a transgender person impossible. The continuous introduction of anti-trans laws, no protections for gender identity or sexuality to speak of, active suppression of queer events like drag queen storytime with protestors made up of members of national anti-LGBTQ hate groups, and a large religious population that often looks down on and rejects trans and queer people existing here at all- especially in the insular and highly right-wing rural towns, where I had lived and have been working in still. An area that can be very dangerous when you're openly trans.

Idaho lacks the opportunities I need to expand my artistic career, find community, and save up the money needed to help support myself or do things like eventually save up for top surgery.

Over the past few years I've struggled with a lot of financial instability that's made it so there have been multiple times I've been unable to afford medication, groceries, and at times my rent and bills. I am solely supporting myself. There have been times I have been lucky enough to have some help keeping me from things like eviction, help from the kindness of my friends. But there's only so much that can be done, that they can do, and only so many precarious situations to scrape by until something breaks.

Living in that instability, that looming risk, is a drain on my physical, mental, and emotional well-being. As well as being stuck in a place where I have faced open harassment, a place unaccepting and unaccommodating at best, outright dangerous at worst. I've experienced both, and have had to exist in these small communities that do not forget who and what you are, and a fact made very clear- that you do not belong.

It is a long and unhappy history which lead to me dropping out of high school at 16 to escape the bullying, severely struggling with my mental health, and being forced to leave the house soon after turning 18 when discovered I was on HRT.

Idaho is and always has been a dead end for me, and with the approach of winter this year I was faced with the impending consequence of losing access to my job and fruitlessly searching for another that can even support me, when those searches can and have taken months because of a staggering lack of employment opportunity. Or jobs that will pay you enough to live.

With the unimaginable grace and kindness of friends, I've had help to find me a way to get me out of Idaho, been given an opportunity to go move out to a city in another state. Somewhere with more jobs, more people, more diversity of individuals and thought. And an opportunity to take further steps into seeking the life I want so dearly, where I can pursue my passions and experience life among others.

The chance to get back on HRT, make friends, be around people I love, save up for my future and schooling, try to save up for top surgery again, build the framework of my life out of a tangible hope. More than just a dream or idea. Going there, all of that will be far more possible than being stuck here all alone ever could be. But I need to be able to survive there in order to stay.

I am taking with me whatever savings I can drum up, shipping a handful of boxes, and leaving before the snow falls when I'd lose my income. And that's basically all I have. I am going to live with roommates and pay my first months rent and hurry and look for a job and try as hard as possible to make sure I never have to return to Idaho again. It is an incredible blessing to be able to leave, but it will not be easy, nor has it been. And there are things I need to stay afloat.

Getting a car out there is an essential tool to commuting to work and giving me autonomy and mobility. While I have some money to take with me to help me get situated, it isn't much, not enough for a car in the slightest. First thing I will have to do after getting a job is aim for a car as soon as I can. Especially as I struggle with a disability that can impair my mobility and make regularly walking to work incredibly painful and hard on my body. Even if I can't make my goal here, just getting enough for an electric bike so I can get to a job to save up for a car is better than nothing.

If you have any money to spare, even just a small bit, you would be helping towards my current life and my future in an essential way. I have so many things I want to do, to pursue, to experience. Things that have been out of my reach for so long. Dragging myself out of the pit of poverty and the wretched dead end road of the state and area I am from is hard, and making it any easier would mean everything to me. To help me get closer to finally feeling like I can begin to live my life, to help maintain that life when I do. It cannot be an 'if' it has to be a 'when.' It has to be.

I ask humbly and sincerely to please help me make and maintain that reality and future, help get me have the tools to do it. It will mean and do so much more for me than you could ever know.

Thank you so very much for your time and consideration, and for listening to my story. And if you do choose to contribute, thank you dearly from the bottom of my heart. For that incredible compassion, and for believing in me.