MAKAYLA O’CONNOR is a 15 YEAR OLD patient in the PSYCHIATRIC WARD. She has been diagnosed with ANOREXIA and JUVENILE OSTEOPOROSIS and looks a lot like Kaitlyn Dever.
Makayla was the middle child in a family of 3, having both an older sister Olivia and a younger brother Tucker. Her mother passed away giving birth to Tucker when Makayla was 4 and her father had a rough time after her death, turning to alcohol in the years after. He lost his job, eventually moving in with his sister across the country as he couldn’t pay for their house anymore. At this time, Makayla was 8, and had begun to help out around the house and with taking care of Tucker, as her father was incapable of taking care of his own children, because the girls reminded him of their mom and he blamed Tucker for her death.
WE HOPE THEY ARE PLAYING A GAME
At their aunt’s house they had 2 cousins, Jonah and Katie. Katie was a couple years older than Olivia but Jonah was close in age to Makayla. Makayla looked up to Katie, as well as Olivia, but to her Katie was the image of perfection, her family was better than hers, so she must be perfect. She started trying to copy Katie in different ways, how she did her hair, what she wore, and most significantly, what she ate. Katie, being about 13 when they came to live with her was just going into her teens, and being a competitive dancer was very concerned about how she looked at all times. She would go on phases where she would try and lose weight, going on diets, and unknown to anyone in the family, would also binge and purge in secret. Makayla tried to copy this, not knowing that it was unhealthy, she just wanted to be like her big cousin. Her aunt was preoccupied with her father and she didn’t notice that the younger girl was becoming much thinner than she had been when she had arrived.
BUT THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING
The two girls went on like that for 3 years until it was very clear that Makayla was sick. Her aunt brought her to a doctor who diagnosed her with Anorexia Nervosa, and recommended that the family had group counselling, to try and solve some of the issues within. Her aunt, cousins and siblings were there for Makayla throughout her slow recovery, but her father was still struggling with his addiction to alcohol, which was becoming worse every day, many times he would drink himself to sleep in the morning and stay passed out throughout the entire day. Around the time that Katie was preparing to go to university, he passed away from liver failure as a result from his drinking. Their aunt took custody over the kids, as she already took care of them anyways, and they remained in her house. Katie left for university and Makayla started high school that year, and in an effort to control the parts of her life that had changed so much in the past few months, she began slipping back into old habits, skipping meals, over exercising, counting calories obsessively. Her aunt noticed, and was worried, but Makayla got sneakier with it over the year in an effort to hide it. At a dance class at school one day though, she went to do a split leap, and ended up breaking her ankle on the step leading into it. The doctor ended up diagnosing her with Juvenile Osteoporosis, which was a result of her Anorexia, and recommended they send her to Brielle to get help with both illnesses.
Unfortunately, Makayla is TAKEN!
