Was I Ever Normal...

By: Becca Pava

Was I Ever Normal invites us into the head of Cassie, a young girl growing up with childhood-onset schizoaffective disorder. She is desperately trying to cover up her psychosis by creating a web of lies so intricate that they only serve to further entangle her in her world of mental illness. Cassie has no idea how to respond to the chaos in her head and instead creates mass chaos for herself in her external life in the form of multiple, repetitive suicide attempts in response to command hallucinations, cutting, pulling out her hair in clumps, biting herself, starving herself for fear her food is poisoned and more. This leads to a revolving door of psychiatric hospital admissions.

Was I Ever Normal demonstrates how the mental health system has failed so many children with severe psychiatric diagnoses. It introduces readers to the realities of the taboo world of childrens' inpatient psychiatric treatment units and takes some of the stigma out of the for-so-long-forbidden world of psychiatric illnesses and treatments.

About the Author

The author, Becca Pava, also has a history of mental illness and felt her story needed to be shared with the world to offer hope and validation.

Despite her illnesses, Becca has still managed to get a college education and launch a successful writing career. In 2007 she won top honors in a statewide Letters About Literature contest and was presented an award by the state senator. In 2008 she was a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Competition and Amazon paid Createspace to publish her YA novel When One Door Closes, which is available for sale on Amazon.com. Luna Luna published a personal essay she wrote, One Girl's Story of Mistreatment & The Illness That Brought her There in their literary journal in 2016.

Pava earned a BA from Elms College in May 2016 when she graduated summa cum laude with a GPA of 3.98. From 2018 to 2021 she wrote blog content for different companies through Verblio. She also writes software content for a company that is designing an app to decrease distraction in today's world of social media. Since March of 2019, she has been writing and managing a blog called Chronically Alive (www.chronicallyalive.net). Becca regularly updates this blog. It has reached over 65,000 people so far.