This is to fund my legal name change.

I am 21, trans, and very ill. Although a legal name change has been important to me in the many years that I've been known to the world as 'Jasper', I've not yet had the opportunity to save up for and fund my own legal name change.

Throughout my life, I've suffered from a debilitating chronic illness which manifests as severe and devastating neurologic dysfunction. Thus far, I'm at least diagnosed with narcolepsy. I am dizzy, confused, and weak every day. My severest episodes have me writhing in agony on the floor for hours-on-end. Over the past 8 years, my illness has rapidly worsened. Still, I pushed through my symptoms to graduate high school and start college. When my mother passed away in 2022, I pushed through my grief and my illness to Door Dash so that I may support myself and pay for gas to get to classes. The flexible hours were the only way I was able to work with my unpredictable illness. I worked whenever I could, and such occasions became fewer and further in between. I was managing but getting sicker and sicker. There came a point that I was having to go on break during my work hours to fall asleep due to daytime hypersomnia. I shouldn't have been working at that point, but I was, because it was my only means of supporting myself, and I was still fighting with doctors, appointment after appointment, specialist after specialist, to get treatment.

Through school, medical, and gas expenses, I've gone through the money I'd saved. I then became too dysfunctional to work consistently, only capable of taking a few orders at a time on occasion. I had to stop registering for classes– I was too dizzy and confused to get my work done and neither disability nor administration on campus would accommodate me without a diagnosis (which I did not have at the time).

This year, Door Dash changed its policy so that the 'display' name is the same as the user's legal name. Other such work opportunities have the same policy. Not only does this cause a lot of discomfort for me; it is reasonably unsafe for me, a young trans man, to be putting my dead name out there to customers that I interact with. I feel that I would be putting myself in harm's way in a country that is currently targeting trans people and so I did not feel that I could continue working so long as such conditions are in place. Upon contacting Door Dash about this, the operator successfully changed my name back to 'Jasper', only for it to flag my account for suspicious activity and suspend me. I can no longer take orders whatsoever. My life has come down to doing nothing but scheduling appointments, getting scans done, and convincing doctors to help me. I pinch the spare change that people throw my way for gas and that's all I've got. I've found myself at a loss.

I've struggled with the frustrating discrepancy between my legal name and my preferred name for 6 years now, but it is now preventing me from supporting myself financially. I now feel that the change is urgent, and I can't currently afford it alone.

$600 is to cover the cost of the filing fee, fingerprinting fee, additional card fees, and fees for changing and reprinting documents such as my license.

I've included art pieces I've made to express the agony of my illness so that you may understand its severity.

Any and all support is appreciated so sincerely. Thank you, with much love.