carrie annsley grew up with a loving mother and a distant father, in a middle-class setting in hawkins, indiana. she was decent at school, had a reasonably large group of friends, and was happy for most of her childhood. though her father was a deadbeat dad, her mother uplifted carrie in everything that she did, and was carrie's light and everlasting rock against any difficulties that would come her way.
carrie was thirteen when her mother disappeared. though the disappearance was looked into by the police, the case was dropped after a short amount of time, the town assuming that helena annsley had run off to another city and abandoned her daughter and deadbeat husband. however, her mother was never discovered in any records of the other cities, and a body was never found. her mother's disappearance destroyed both carrie and her father. carrie resorted to rebellion, smoking, alcohol and drugs to cope. rather, her father simply stopped caring about her, and carrie was forced to fend for herself. as a result of this dramatic change to her life, most of carrie's friends began to fade out of her life—including steve harrington, who would have rather been popular and cool than hang out with the girl with a missing mother. this lead to carrie being a loner and an outcast in hawkins. she became more bitter and rude, and stopped giving a shit about everything. her grades dropped, she became distant and biting.
it became carrie's sole objective to investigate what happened to her mother, and to find where out where she was. carrie was convinced that her mother was alive and hadn't abandoned her. so, she began to search, and search, and search, until it was all she was focused on. she created a connections board to discover where her mother might have gone and constantly adds new connection pieces.
yet, carrie always knew faintly in the corner of her mind that there was something deeper in this whole investigation. that perhaps the thing that took her mother three years ago was not entirely human, and had many arms and shadows that curled around her room whenever she tried to remember.
