Sometimes I think of Amy Pond, who grew up being called mad by those who wielded the word as a tool of exclusion and shame —
Amy Pond, who though forced into the hands of four psychiatrists, still clung to that which they called madness until those systems which elevate psychosocial conformity above humanity stripped it from her —
Amy Pond, whose imaginary friend reappeared for a single hour after twelve years and reignited that faith before disappearing for two more years —
Amy Pond, who spent those those two years under the same implicit threat ingrained in her through psychiatric violence, and thus began to believe the man who stopped the invasion was “just a madman with a box,” only for him to agree, and to also call her “mad, impossible Amy Pond,” reframing madness as non-negative for the first time in her life —
Amy Pond, who ignored the disembodied voice of her imaginary friend even as she ran away with him for real, who still lived each day with the traumatic internalization of deviancy dictated upon her by the psychiatric-industrial complex that shaped her from childhood —
Amy Pond, who wouldn't acknowledge the Doctor's voice, such that it took an Angel in her eye that was literally killing her to ensure she couldn't reality check herself —
Amy Pond, who stood before a room which muttered about “the psychiatrists we brought her to,” and though afraid, escaped their rigid parameters of acceptable existence.