Homeland Sadfiction
I want to start by saying that this post mentions mental health problems, substance abuse and suicide. If those aren’t things you want to read about right now, I get it, you can just skip this one.
Today I am sharing my (so far) singular attempt at fan fiction, which will go up on Archive Of Our Own (AO3) once it’s finished, and it’s about the suicide of the lead character of television show Homeland - Carrie Mathison. If you’re fine with this topic, and you aren’t worried about mild spoilers for the show, please keep reading. But if you are in a bad place right now, or just have no interest in reading about these subjects, then by all means, stop reading before the page break below.
Please take care of yourself. 💚
If you or someone you know is feeling down, or thinking about suicide, please talk to someone, or call your local suicide hotline. Aotearoa New Zealand free call or text 1737 or visit mentalhealth.org.nz/helplines Australia call 11 13 14 or visit lifeline.org.au United States free call 988 or visit 988lifeline.org UK call 111, option 2 (please note, this does not appear to be available nation-wide at this stage) Canada free call 1 833 456 4566 or text 45645 or visit talksuicide.ca If you're in a country not listed, you may be able to simply search 'suicide hotline' on Google to get the most relevant service for your area.
If you’re still here, welcome. Some of you may know, I am a big Carrie Mathison fan, the lead character on Homeland. She’s my fictional war criminal bae. But one of the things I love about the character is that she’s so flawed, and somehow coping while working and living in an unbelievably stressful job as a CIA Case Officer. I would be hard pressed to think of another character on another show that so explicitly deals with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and all manner of other things Carrie goes through during the nine years that Homeland was on the air. One of the things that hit me the hardest early on in this show was in the episode State of Independence - the third episode of season two - where Carrie attempts to take her own life. Of course she doesn’t go through with it; instead she chooses to vomit up the cocktail of wine and pills right at the last minute to save herself.
When I was rewatching this episode for the third time recently, it occurred to me that Carrie was probably literally within maybe a minute or two, three at most, from the mixture hitting her blood stream and being unable to save herself in time. And I started thinking, what would happen if this actually was the end of Carrie’s story, and what would the aftermath look like? So I started writing. What I’m about to share here is by no means complete so please withhold a final judgement until I can get through the ending and publish it on AO3, which I’ll be sharing here when that happens. I wanted to show the scene in which it happens, which is mostly done, and leave out the aftermath for now.
So without further ado, here is my take on ‘The Suicide of Carrie Mathison.’
When Carrie arrived at home, she poured herself a glass of wine. She took a sip, then a gulp. She put clean sheets on the bed, unpacked her bag, and opened the living room blinds. She sat in the dark for a moment. It started raining, Carrie could hear it pattering on the roof. It’s nice, she thought. That sound. She decided to go out, get a drink, maybe find some guy to have a drunken one-night-stand with. She did her makeup, put on her fake wedding ring and a nice dress. But when she got to the front door, as she was putting on her lip gloss, she looked at herself in the mirror and thought “This is wrong. I feel… wrong.” And all of a sudden, she completely fell apart.
Carrie tipped the contents of her medication bottles onto the kitchen counter and stared at them – these pills had saved her life more than once, but now they were going to end it. She poured a large drinking glass full of white wine, picked up the pills off the counter, put them in her mouth and downed them, along with the entire glass of wine. She put the glass back on the counter, filled it up again, and again downed it. She stood for a moment, sighed, and reflected on what she had just done, and what was about to happen to her. Calmly she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, took off her shoes, lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.
It trickled in slowly at first, the feeling – the world around her seemed to wobble slightly, then pulse. Then ever so slowly the feeling intensified. Carrie opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. It began to spin. Then the thought hit her like a ton of bricks – Saul. Saul is counting on me. She hauled herself up, but as she tried to move off of the bed, the spinning and the pulsing and wobbling peaked and she found herself on the floor. As Carrie tried to stand, her arms and legs failed her, felt like jelly. Moved like jelly. Carrie started to panic. “Shit! No no no no…” she tried to say, but all that came from her mouth was a series of low moans. The world around Carrie began turning to television static as her body slumped until she laid flat on the floor, and as she reached for her phone in a last ditch effort to abandon her suicide attempt and save herself, the world went black, and she was gone. Unconscious. Within an hour, Carrie Anne Mathison would be dead.
I myself have had periods of suicidal ideation (thoughts of suicide - wikipedia definition) many times, and it’s scary to watch someone on TV have those same feelings and then follow through. Especially someone who has been through hell like Carrie Mathison. A couple of years ago a cousin of mine died by suicide, and even though we weren’t close I went to the funeral anyway, because I wanted to show up for his family and friends. And I’ve been pretty torn up in the past about people like Chester Bennington, who’s music and lyrics helped define my tastes in the early-to-mid 2000’s, and still enjoy today, and Robin Williams who I watched and enjoyed the works of… kind of all my life.
Suicide is tragic, and it’s so hard. I want to make it clear here that by writing this fan fiction, I am not attempting to belittle the subject, not even remotely. This subject is deeply personal to me, and writing this is partly to help heal my own trauma, but I also wanted to reach out to others on the matter in a, hopefully, meaningful way, and maybe help someone else a little bit with their trauma as well. People tend to think that suicidal ideation is rare, and that you’re somehow a bad person for having those thoughts, and I think that’s why a lot of people struggle to reach out. I think it’s important to keep the conversation going, so when people have those thoughts, they know they’re not alone.
Again, those mental health a suicide resources listed at the beginning are as follows:
Aotearoa New Zealand free call or text 1737 or visit mentalhealth.org.nz/helplines Australia call 11 13 14 or visit lifeline.org.au United States free call 988 or visit 988lifeline.org UK call 111, option 2 (please note, this does not appear to be available nation-wide at this stage) Canada free call 1 833 456 4566 or text 45645 or visit talksuicide.ca
And again, if you’re outside these areas, you may be able to find the relevant resource for you by Googling ‘suicide hotline’.
The holiday season, a.k.a. this month of December in particular, can be a really hard time of year for a lot of people; whether it’s stressing about gifts or prep for The Big Day, or being alone or without contact with loved ones while the television and the movies and the radio are all telling you how happy you should be. If you’re not doing it particularly tough right now, spare a thought for those who are less fortunate, and consider reaching out if you know someone who you think may be particularly vulnerable right now. I recently signed up for the Prisoner Correspondence Network Aotearoa, which is a service that helps people in New Zealand prisons to find penpals! I thought it was a really neat idea, and it hadn’t even occurred to me until I started this post that people in prison are doing it even tougher than some. This is not an ad, they didn’t pay me or ask me to talk about them, I just wanted to let y’all know it is a thing that exists.
I hope you liked, or got something out of this post. I know it’s a bit of an intense subject, but it’s something I care deeply about. If you’d like to talk to me about anything I’ve written here today, feel free to send me a message on the social medias. Right now I’m most active on Mastodon and Twitter, so try me there first, ke?
Thanks so much for reading. Stay safe, be kind, and I’ll see you all again in a few days.
Kia haumaru. Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚
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