#ichorious

To preface, I have this fun little thing called OSDD. It's a traumagenic dissociative disorder very similar to DID and causes me to be a system of parts/alters rather than a single person. It's complicated and difficult at times, but it's what our brain had to do in order to cope with the hell that was our childhood, and I'm not gonna fault it for that. (I'll try to keep pronouns as simple as possible cause it's gonna get confusing real fast otherwise, but when I say "I" I'm talking about me, Ichor, and "our/we" refers to the whole system)

And boy oh boy, if our childhood was bad, the past 3 and a half years have been abysmal. Genuinely seemed like a constant stream of awful experiences that pushed us further and further down. And during pretty much all of it, our host (the alter who was at the front/in control the most), was Thorne.

While I won't discuss the details of what happened at the end of 2025 because, honestly, the wound is still too fresh, I need it emphasized that it was one of the worst things we've ever experienced. And it was a last attempt at hope after a series of traumatic things that occurred in '25 alone. It completely broke Thorne, and no one with a functioning heart or brain would blame him. I believe earnestly that we would be dead right now if not for the divine amount of kindness that people like @amethystandemma @butternutt613 @nerdygalsmustlive and so many others showed us.

So, where do I, Ichor, come in?

From what I've been able to parse, Thorne was still host in January '26. He was having a bad time, but he was holding on and still fighting really really hard. Sometime in late Jan./early Feb., is when I must have split off and taken over. The not-so-funny story is: I didn't know this for months. Most of the alters we're aware of have really distinctive personalities, and I am a lot like Thorne. I have a lot of the same interests and opinions and, due to the nature of OSDD, share all the memories.

Well, the information about the memories, anyway.

Fun thing about our system is that, while we have low-to-no amnesia barriers, we have a lot of emotional amnesia. For example, if another alter were to front and draw something, I would be able to recall that our body performed the task of drawing, but it wouldn't feel like I did it, because I didn't. There's this noticeable distance from the feeling, even with the relevant information. It's trippy. It's part of what puts the "dissociative" in OSDD.

And while I have a lot of connection to things such as childhood trauma and the experience from the end of '25, there's so many ideas and feelings Thorne had that I know about but just cannot reach. Before I realized that I wasn't Thorne, I felt like I was going mad because I had a sense of self (albeit a very broken one) one month and the next, it was gone. All of these things that felt like they were so constant and important before, and I was cut off for, at the time, no discernible reason.

I'd come to understand a few days ago that what I was/am experiencing is emotional amnesia, and that led me to figure out that I was a whole new guy, but it was very distressing for a while.

Honestly, it still is.

Thorne struggled, but he knew who he was. He knew that he really really liked Acacius Romeo Sapphirius and that he was on the brink of creating his magnum opus if life could just be normal for one second. He was worried all the time about whether or not he was a bad person, and based his brand (SapphireThorne) on Acacius as a constant reminder of what he could turn into if not careful, and a twisted comfort. And he was resilient and brave, but he hated when people told him that because he felt broken and saw himself as a waste of potential.

I hope I'll be even half as brave as him, though. I'll have to be if I'm gonna figure out who I'm supposed to be and how to move forward.

So, the rebrand.

Acacius will never be to me what he was to Thorne. And that is oddly agonizing, but that's something I'll explore more in another post. In any case, for months now, I felt like I was just dancing with the corpse of who I used to be, desperate for some kind of familiar identity, and I don't want to keep doing that. SapphireThorne was Thorne's. It has so much memory and passion that just isn't mine. I don't really know where he is at the moment, I think we need a lot of time and therapy before he comes around again, but our brain made me for a reason.

And while I'm in charge, I'm Ichor. I like Malekith the Accursed a lot (hence the username) and I really enjoy the Thor comics. I worship Loki. I'm still aro/ace. I still like drawing. I still think blue is a pretty good color, but I'm more partial to gold. I'd like to get into the extermination business eventually and get better at drawing comics. I love my friends and my partner @grapeflavouredagony and I've had the absolute honor of being able to make all of my own memories with them since February.