Asterix

I don't have any reoccurring dream per se, just a reoccurring dream theme: high school Latin class. I'm beginning to think that my reoccurring high school Latin class dream is an anxiety dream, because in every dream with this theme and plot structure, I'm behind. I haven't been to class for a few weeks. I didn't turn my homework in for the day, or the days before. I have no idea where my Latin dictionary is. I had no idea how to get to the classroom in the first place. I have no idea who many of the students are - they weren't in my Latin class in high school! But plenty of the faces are.

It's always the same teacher - one of my two high school Latin teachers. And for some reason, she never scolds me in these dreams. She just goes along, like I'll catch up and shift at my own pace. I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe it's the same way I approach some of my slacking tutoring students: I know they are capable of doing the work, but sometimes scolding and punishing and singling out is more harm than its worth. Sometimes ignoring the problem makes students like me - eager to please, and diligent and capable - feel even worse, because then I know the teacher is disappointed that I didn't work to my abilities.

So why - all these years later, having majored in Classical Studies, and received a Masters degree - do I still go to high school Latin in class in my subconscious as the metaphor for anxiety, and feeling like - knowing that? - I could be working much harder and more efficiently and in a more timely manor than I currently am?

I've written my Latin history before here. I'll spare the lengthy details this time around. But to summarize, I started taking Latin in sixth grade because my father told me it would boost my verbal SAT score (ironically, this would be my lowest standardized test score from high school). I started off with a bang - straight As all through 9th grade, and inducted into the Latin honor society. By 10th and 11th grade, an eating disorder and depression had taken hold of my everything. My grades slipped, my mental stability slipped, my physical health slipped, my emotions fluctuated, and I was, by no means, reaching my potential in school, particularly in Latin.

After a two-year stint studying in Europe, I went to college, wanting to major in Classical Studies, with a concentration in Latin. And so I did. I loved the language. I'd missed it terribly while in Europe. And again - I started off with a bang. Straight As freshman and sophomore year. By junior year, I was struggling. My two worst grades of college, in my major, in the language and subject matter I'd been studying at that point for 10 years.

I don't think it was my ability, or the language itself. It was that I was running two campus organizations, taking several demanding courses - including writing courses in which I preferred to focus my efforts, performing poetry all the time on behalf of one of the organizations I ran, minoring in theatre, sitting on body image panels, attending meetings for myriad women and feminist organizations, and also, you know, maintaining a multitude of friends and a social life. And oh yeah, working heavily in therapy on recovering from previously aforementioned eating disorder, and a series of other luxurious traumas that welcomed me to college.

So again, it wasn't my ability that was being challenged here with college junior year Latin. It was my priorities, my ability to manage my time, my ability to make time to highlight my skill set in an area for which I had tremendous passion. But having enough time for Latin translations each night, meant hours. It took hours for me to translate the works of Ovid and Petronious that I was assigned. And to this day, I still regret that. I still regret fumbling and falling just because I couldn't figure out how to make the time. Just because I have a life-long insatiable ability to sabotage those things I love and enjoy most, by putting other things ahead. Now, in college, I'm not sure that I loved Latin more than my poetry group, or feminism, or writing, or my friends. So I'm not really sure what would have needed to give in order for me to have succeeded that year in Latin. Maybe the excessive emotional stresses I put on myself? Maybe those?

But nowadays, I can see where I'm playing this game again. I can see why I had to have the Latin dream, again. I'm not nearly working to my full potential as a writer. I'm not nearly scratching the surface of what I'm capable of as a poet and activist. I'm putting so many other things ahead. Some of them are in order to survive financially, others could maybe give a little - like the extra hour of snoozing my alarm each morning. On the other hand, others would argue I need the sleep.

All I know is that the dream came again. Last night. Or rather this morning - while I was snoozing - oh the irony. I suppose it was telling me to get out of bed and start writing. And so I did. An hour and a half later than I planned last night.