The Time I Was On Steroids And My Family Made Fun Of Me

Picture this: it's the summer of '05 and the Russ Clines have just moved to beautiful Dana Point, CA to partake in a 7-month-long vacation from reality. We're all moved into our new house and celebrating seaside weather by eating most of our meals on the patio and visiting the ocean as often as we want. Because we've just moved, the younger members of the family are virtually without friends (except for the occasional friendly face we see during the youth group our parents make us attend) so we're mostly hanging out with each other, dabbling in the art of makeup (yes, even Riley) and XBox and attempting to learn how to surf.

So it's the middle of summer and time is about to start passing more rapidly as the beginning of school approaches and we're enjoying one of our leisurely-spent breakfasts on our back patio when suddenly the peace is disturbed as one of my hilarious family members cracks a joke and we all partake in showing our amusement at the hilarity.

"Rheanna," Riley interrupts my grumpy morning-time revelry, "what's wrong with your face?"

I look into the window that I'm facing and have no idea what he's talking about.

"No, try smiling," my mom says.

So I smile and realize that there is something amuck with the reflection looking back at me in the window: try as I might, half of my mouth will not turn upward.

My family members laugh. Yes. They laugh. They laugh, they tease, they joke, and all the time my head is racing through all the possibilities of what could possibly be wrong with me. I'm thinking maybe a bug bit me during the night, or maybe I sprained a muscle, or maybe I accidentally took a muscle relaxant with the bite of scrambled eggs that my parents insisted I eat. (I have a natural aversion to scrambled eggs, mostly because the yellow color reminds me what they really are, but my parents think that if I don't get any protein in my breakfast, I will die. Or something.) It was a very traumatizing experience. Myself, living through this internal agony, while my family made fun of me.

Eventually I convince my parents that something is actually wrong with my face and they take me to the pediatrician (pediatrician! at 16 years of age!) who informs me that half of my face is paralyzed because I have Bell's Palsy, I will need to take steroids to try to make it go away, and even if my face does go back to normal, I will always have Bell's Palsy and it could show up any time in my life. So I go on steroids and my family continues to mock me, making comments about my impending manliness due to the steroids.

My face eventually went back to normal, but the trauma because of this experience will always live on inside me.

(I also eventually forgave my family, even though Riley still says that my name means "one who looks like man" in ancient languages.)

Dust to Dust

More from 2007:

you want to know something ridiculous? that's what i'm most afraid of. that i won't make a difference in anybody's life. that i'll just be some girl from some other world.

i don't want to just leave dust all over other people's lives. dust is annoying and you always try to flick it off but it doesn't really go anywhere. it's pointless and useless and leaves dirty marks.

Boundaries; or Why I Would Like To Do Anything For You

May 2, 2007: found in my Bible as Lit notebook.


Maybe this is how I'll always
feel; looking back on the occurrences
that drenched my spirit in
lighter fluid, then tossed me in
the flames (even though it takes a
while for things to catch on fire in
the altitude, it still happens eventually).
Maybe I'll be stuck with my confusion,
frustration, bitter prejudation tinting
all of my memories and convincing me
that nothing worth it happened at all.
(Except for you, that is. You made my
year. Remember?) But there's the
rub: worthwhile things finally made
it into my semi-non-existent
life. Your smile finally lit up my
days. Your encouragement finally
pushed happiness into my walk. Your
chilvarous notions finally made me
believe (that they're not all like
that "other one" out there in the
real world).
Yes. You made my year worth it.

The United States of America smells weird.

While I was still living in Ecuador, my family usually ended up spending a significant amount of traveling around the States during the summers. One of the best things about these trips was the way the Miami airport felt: the moment I stepped off the plane, everything felt clearer in a sense, and airier. Not only did it feel a certain way, but it also had a distinct scent.

I'm currently sitting at my little desk in the cardiology office where I work and I can smell that scent. I've come to associate it with summer, because of those month-long trips during my missionary life, and heat and romance. It's thicker than the air I'm used to and lighter, too, all at the same time. It smells like shopping malls and Christian camps, the drive on the way to In-N-Out and hours and hours worth of family road trips. It smells like Fourth of July fireworks and relatives I barely know and sometimes what I can remember of the East Coast and churches - dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of churches all shaken across the country like rainbow sprinkles on top of a mini cup of old fashioned vanilla frozen yogurt from Golden Spoon. It smells like falling in love too quickly and bad choices and my sister screaming and my brother cuddling and it smells like songs I made up about Tyler Padgett and living out of a suitcase and huge scoops of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

It smells like dreaming about my future and what returning to live in this "foreign" world would look like.

And now I'm moving into my third year of living independently in Southern California and it still only takes three-and-a-half weeks of Ecuadorian life to signal my nose to this epically American scent. But that's ok, because I don't think I ever want to get to the point where Ecuador is the place that smells weird to me.

Mr. Bundles

Dear Mr. Jaxson Forest Lindsay (Jay),

It is I, your 6th grade crush. Remember? I'm the one you handed the "I like you" note to outside of our classroom during recess that one day in late Spring. I'm the one you played tag with all over campus and the one you asked, "Are you alright now, Rheanna?" when I had that nasty cold before the performance of our 6th grade play.

You may think it is pitiful that I still remember this, indeed, that I even remember your full name. Maybe it is pitiful, but that's not all I remember.

It was the second semester of 6th grade when you first whistled your way into my life. I had a crush immediately on your red hair and freckles, and on the fact that you came from Cotopaxi, the school where everyone apparently smoked. I thought this made you instantly cooler than all of the boys at my small missionary-bubbled school. You were a brand new transfer student and all I wanted was to chase you around the playground (I was 12, give me a break).

Our teachers chose Annie for our 6th grade play, and while I was Grace Farrell, private secretary to Oliver Warbucks ("Oliver Warbucks the millionaire?"), you were Mr. Bundles, the laundry man. When I found out which part you got, I desperately wanted to be Miss Hannigan because there was a secret romance insinuated between the two characters in the script and even at that young age, I thought art should imitate life.

During our 6th grade graduation, I flirted and flirted with you, Peter Carrera, and Eric Bean, because I couldn't decide which of you I liked best. I contemplated this issue for a whole summer, finally deciding on you when it turned out you sat behind me in our 7th grade homeroom. Later on in the year, I would stick my hands behind me when the teacher was praying and we would hold hands.

You asked me to the hayride and I had to say no because I wasn't allowed to date. This is one of my biggest regrets.

Our relationship culminated in a death, Jay Lindsay. It was the death of our classmate, Gun Hi Bae. He was in our History and English class and sometimes sat at the same table where we sat. This means that we probably accidentally played footsies with him a couple of times. We went to his funeral together, and you held my hand as we watched his body being brought to the building and, later on, in the van on the way back to school. You pointed out your apartment as we drove and I still can't drive through that part of town without thinking about you and how sad you looked that whole day.

(Years later, I wrote a story about Gun's funeral and I referred to you as my "first love". I still am not completely sure why I did.)

After that, we didn't talk so much. You stuck around for our 8th grade year and then your mom moved you away. During one of our middle school summers, we went to church camp together and you became a Christian. I remember because you threw away all of your shirts with the dragons and "bad stuff" on them and I thought it was really honorable of you to do that.

And then you moved away and for the longest time my ears would perk up when I heard anyone mention your name. Once, I heard you had been put in jail and I prayed for you.

The thing is, Jay Lindsay, you started all this nonsense with me feeling like I have to save people. It's because of you and your problems and my unquenchable desire to fix them for you that I still find myself drawn to broken people who need me. But they don't really need me, Jay Lindsay. There isn't anything I can do to actually save them. They have to figure it out on their own and that's what I never got the chance to learn from you.

Anyway, Jay Lindsay, we recently became friends on myspace, so maybe it's about time that I resolve all these issues that I have as a result of you. Maybe we can have a nice long conversation about how much I wrote about you in my journal back then and prayed that God would let me know if he wanted me to like like you or just like you.

Or maybe we can catch up through a few short and stilted emails and then move on.

But no matter what happens, I'm still glad I chose you to have a crush on in 6th grade. You were nice to me and I had a lot of fun playing tag with you. So thank you for that. And also I'm sorry I couldn't help you with the things you needed to figure out. Hopefully you've figured them out by now.

Hope your life is good.

Lots of love,

Rheanna Lea Cline