#then you think about amy’s abandonment issues and you cry (via @clarabosswald)
Oh boy it’s been far too long since I’ve talked about Amy’s abandonment issues.
This right here, Amy’s tendency to push people away as soon as they get close to her, explicitly insulting them and herself for caring, is what always gets me. Even now, looking at this gifset, I get uncomfortable, because that’s me. As someone with abandonment issues, I work to keep people at a safe distance with sarcastic insults and somewhat standoffish behavior until I feel I can trust them. Amy does the same thing. Amy wants Rory to care for her, and she wants the Doctor to care for her, but the second she allows them to care for her, the second she lets them in, it’s all over. Her armor’s down and they can hurt her.
Compare the first and second scenes. In the first scene, Rory is clearly trying to care for Amy, and she’s negating him. She’s saying “no, you don’t actually care that much; you can’t.” Her insult doesn’t come from a place of disgust, rather one of disbelief. She honestly doesn’t want to accept that Rory could care enough about her wellbeing to worry about her disappearance, and when she’s confronted with that care, she rejects it. She has to, because if she accepts that Rory cares for her safety, that he loves her, then she has to let him in. She has to let him past her walls and be vulnerable around him. She has to put him in a position where he can abandon her if he wanted to.
Forget that he never would. Forget the fact that he wears his love for Amy on his sleeve. These things aren’t rational. That’s shown so evidently in the second gif. Amy’s insulting herself for wanting someone to care for her. She’s shutting herself down for considering that someone would want to look after her. Amy’s most critical of herself, and this is one of her weakest points. She so desperately wants someone to prove that she matters, but when they do she can’t believe it. She has to keep her sarcasm. She has to stay strong. Because what if she let the Doctor in and he rejected her? What if he asked her to say and he told her she was clingy? That would be the end. That would break her beyond repair.
So she builds these walls around herself to stop herself from what she views as surefire destruction. She’d rather crumble internally than let someone else take her down. She may be hurting, she may need help, and she may want so badly to find someone safe enough to let in, but no way in hell will she come off as clingy.