Yesterday I drove to Oklahoma City to pick up my aunt from my cousin’s house. Everyone kept thanking me, but I absolutely loved it. First, I adore being on the road, especially in Tom Collins (my car). Second, when I got there, my cousin fed me dinner–homemade chicken dumplings. Talk about winning. Also, I got to relive part of my childhood by playing the latest version of Mario Kart with my cousin’s oldest son, Carter. (That’s his youngest son, Garrett, above.) Y’all, I distinctly felt ancient. When I was a kid, there were only eight characters to choose from on Mario Kart, but now there are like twenty-five or thirty. (A creature of habit, I chose Princess Toadstool.) Plus, now you can pick your race car, your tires, AND your parachute. (Apparently race cars need parachutes.) Not only that, there’s a new button on the controller that acts as a camera. Carter kept saying, “Take a picture, take a picture,” but I only have so many fingers, and it took every single one of them to simply punch the gas and keep my car on the road.

When did life get so difficult?

As I’ve mentioned before, for the last few weeks I’ve been trying all sorts of over-the-counter medications, vitamins, and herbal supplements to calm down my allergies and histamine-ridden body. Well, completely frustrated, I messaged a chiropractor friend of mine yesterday, who suggested a relatively inexpensive product to cleanse my liver. Since I trust this person and they’ve recommended miracle products before, I picked the product up this morning and just started using it. We’ll see what happens–I’m hopeful.

As I tend to obsess about potential problems, I’m also paranoid and have spent the last hour on the internet gathering all the information I could from every holistic and crackpot website out there about overtaxed livers and how to clean them, the whole time thinking, Are we really going down this road again, Marcus? (Yes. Yes we are.) Now I’ve convinced myself I’m most certainly dying, so I’ve made a mental list of things I need to do: 1) Drink dandelion and milk thistle tea, 2) Eat salads with olive oil, carrots, and beets, 3) Consider coffee and apple cider vinegar enemas, and 4) Stop being so gullible. This is the battle I always wage with health information I find online, sorting out the useful from the useless.  I mean, just because you have tan-colored poop, does it really mean your liver is “tired” or “angry”?

Are body organs even allowed to have emotions?

Another health problem I’ve had for over six months is a pain between my shoulder blades, a kind of tingling sensation that won’t go away. It started one day when I was swimming, and so far no one, including my two chiropractors and three massage therapists, have been able to figure it out. Well, while reading about dirty, upset, overwhelmed livers, I learned that mid-back pain often means you have a liver “issue.” I don’t know who discovers or comes up with this information, but considering I’ve tried everything except a liver cleanse to help my back to no avail, I’m inclined to believe it. It’s at least as good as any other explanation I’ve been given. Again, we’ll see what happens.

Part of the reason I’m writing about all this is that I’m trying to talk myself down off a ledge. I’m sure this isn’t a surprise, but I really do tend to overreact when it comes to personal health problems. I start thinking, Oh my god, my liver is under pressure. (Aren’t we all?) But seriously, I’m–I’m–toxic. Quick, I’ve got to do something–anything–before I turn green. The next thing I know, I’m handing all my money over to some pachouli-wearing hippy in a health food store who swears up and down they cured their fibromyalgia with a table lamp made out of Himalayan sea salt. “Stranger things have happened,” they say. Like that’s a reasonable argument for buying a product.

“Do you take Mastercard?” I usually reply.

Granted, I guess stranger things have happened. Hell, I recently knocked out a sinus infection by sniffing fermented kimchi juice up my nose. So it’s not like the internet isn’t helpful. But I’m really working on taking everything I read with a giant grain of Himalayan sea salt. Like, even if my liver does need some help, things obviously aren’t that bad. It’s not like my skin is turning gray or anything. Plus, maybe it’s possible to simply try one product at a time and see what works, rather than doing what I normally do, which is go from taking zero to two dozen supplements overnight. The shotgun vitamin approach. As my therapist says, “All things in moderation.”

I’m telling myself that I’m doing the best I can–my liver is doing the best it can–we’re all doing the best we can. Last night when I played Mario Kart, each race was crazy. There were turtle shells flying everywhere, banana peels all over the track, bad weather and lightning bolts left and right. Carter gave me about three seconds of instructions, then I just got dropped into the middle of it. To say the least, it was a damn mess. But this is how life is, one big, chaotic mystery. Something that works for you doesn’t work for me, and vice versa. No one has all the answers. So we get up each day and we do the best we can. We try to take it easy on ourselves and we try to have a good time. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we take a few pictures along the way.