by Donna Morrissey
“You’re so smart,” said my friend, Jude, in a crowded bar one night over drinks and smokes. We were sitting in a booth, the four of us friends leaning into each other’s talk. “I’m serious,” she said as I made a face. “You should go to university.”
“I’m not that smart,” I said, but was tickled by her words. She was in her fourth year at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She looked like Brook Shields with her thick dark brows and wide eyes but felt comfy as a cushion with her granny skirts and glasses.
“Why do you think you’re not smart?” asked Karen.
I glazed past that question. I failed high school. I failed secretarial school. I think I failed my IQ test someone gave me along the way. …

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I went home thinking again about my girlfriend’s comments, You’re smart. You should go to university you’re smart, you’re smart. I’d always thought myself smart. Always quick to catch onto things. Always figured plot-endings before a movie was half-ways through. I thought back to high school. It was only math and science I failed.  And they were public exams written by some scholar in some city who probably thought Hampden was some parish in Buckinghamshire, England. And I, in protest, after seeing that most of the material on the exam was stuff we hadn’t even covered in class, marked an X across the entire exam and walked out of class. Night school in Corner Brook was lost in a haze of pot and other stuff best not remembered, and yet, I still managed a 50 in science. Secretarial School was a nose-dive into disaster the minute I stepped into the classroom and the Instructor stared disapprovingly at my jeans and kindly told me I had to wear dresses or skirts. Right. Hadn’t worn a dress or skirt since I was six and Mother stopped dressing me. Plus, I had none. Plus, my skinny legs, bony knees, and knobby ankles were never to be shown in public.

Plus, it was one of the coldest winters on record, that year I went to trade school, with snow up to our butts and I had to walk two miles to get there, and three miles back given how ‘back’ was mostly uphill. And every step forward was to slip back three.  Sometimes I was forced to drop onto my butt and dig in my heels and push myself up backwards because of the ice covering the pavement, praying to the sweet Jesus no car or tractor would come sliding down the hill to greet me. Lovely place for a dress and garters.
Failed. The only things I failed were stupid things. When did I start thinking I was one of the stupid things? Perhaps I should go to university. What was there to fear? The mother of all fears lived inside of me …

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That evening an old family friend of Dave’s dropped by for an unexpected visit. Marion. She was a public servant with a master’s degree in political science and was unmarried, no kids, and enjoyed chatting with Bridgette and Davey. She ordered a pizza and we sat around the table sharing food and a game of cards – Crazy 8’s. It was then, I had an ohh haa moment.
Patiently, Davey explained to her for the third time the rules for Crazy 8’s. She caught on to the suits, but not the runs. She caught on to the runs but forgot the suits. She remembered the deuces meant pick up two but could never remember that the deuce of spades meant pick up four. Or that, to change suits, yes, you had to play an eight, but any card in your hand matching the one just played can also change the suit and no no no, you can’t pick up four with the deuce of diamonds, only the deuce of spades … ohh gawwwd, how’d you ever graduate university with a masters!
And there it was. The ohh haaa moment. If you can do it, I can…

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Come September I was enrolled for three courses at Memorial University of Newfoundland. I was 31. It was  1987. It was eight years since my brother’s passing. Nearly two years since the misdiagnosis that tripped my mind. Eleven months since the mononucleosis diagnoses that ended my job at the fish plant. My daughter was 5, and Davey 12. My first classroom assignment was an essay in a history class. I had to write a composition essay on colonialism in South Africa in the 1800s. I had to write through the perspective of someone who lived through it during those times.
I came home and stared at the history book. And the six others I brought home from the library for research. How does one research? What da fawk was a composition? I found a dictionary. Composition can be a short essay. Essay. Mmmph! Got an A once on an essay in grade six. Lesson number one: look beyond big words to find their simple meaning.
I read all the books. I read and I read. I started taking notes and felt grand that I was taking notes. I kept reading and noting and scribbling till it started making sense.  I started a meatloaf for supper and was standing at the sink soaping down dirty dishes, when the voice came to me. The voice was that of a crookayed white Afrikaner who was British and who was deeply involved in stealing land from Africans for their diamonds. The voice started talking in some twangy accent. I wiped my hands on the back of my jeans and grabbed a pen and started catching the words as they fell through my mind. I wrote fast to catch up with the voice. That night, the essay was written.
A week later I received the paper back with an A. I ran the two miles home, loaded down with books. I bolted inside the house and dropped the books and grabbed the phone and called my mother. I got an A, I said breathlessly when she answered. I blathered like a fool. I told her what the essay was about and what I wrote and the perspective I wrote it from and I blathered and blathered. I was so proud. My mother was prouder. “I wish I lived alongside; I’d be going with you. Now, don’t you give that up. Whatever happens you keep going.”
I kept going. I signed up for four more courses come January and studied through the summer and all through the next year. It was tough. The mono was gone by now, yet the fatigue persisted. The anxiety was constant. My coping behaviours were ludicrous: arriving for each class ten minutes early to ensure a seat by the door in case I needed to flee the pending scream; plotting escape routes instantly upon entering any room; ensuring there were brown paper bags in my pockets should I start hyperventilating; walking up and down six flights of stairs in the library, thrice a day, loaded down with books rather than chance the small suffocating space of the elevator; jiggling my foot so hard during classes that my whole body vibrated and I kept myself hidden beneath coat, scarves, and loose clothing; rocking myself to sleep at night, whispering the lord’s prayer over and over and over; bounding from the bed immediately upon awakening and before monkey brain kicked in; putting a stationary bike in my bedroom when depression started setting in, and pedaliing furiously each morning for three miles in bare feet so’s to get the energy and courage to get downstairs and make breakfast; to stop twirling my fingers through the hair on the back of my head, oftentimes tugging it hard to create physical pain to escape the mental pain; constantly monitoring my cup of tea or coffee in the university cafeteria, scared someone might drug it and I’d lose my thin grasp onto reality; doing progressive relaxation exercises during classes, during conversations, during any fucking moment. Plus, I’d caught on to this great other trick: focusing on my big toe. During those long classes of sitting there, jiggling, and the anxiety threatening to overwhelm me, I’d concentrate all of my energies onto that one part of my entire body and feel it coming alive with sensations, oftentimes feeling it swell to the size of my head, feeling the blood pumping through it, the tingling. Such a silly little act that sometimes had the power to push aside the most crippling anxiety.
(I kept going.  I graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Social Work degree. I look upon those university years as some of the most enlightening years of my life. And most of all, I found my writer’s voice there. And that  is another story.)

The above is excerpted from Pluck. Donna Morrissey’s latest novel is Rage the Night.