On the Ride Home from the Wedding Banquet, He Asked About Levifil—and I Realized the Problem Wasn't the Pill

It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet broke up, and the highway streetlights were sliding backward one by one. A-Kai gripped the steering wheel while I-Chun, in the passenger seat, had kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up on the cushion. The car was quiet, except for the navigation system occasionally reminding us about an exit. Earlier, a whole table of relatives had taken turns asking when they were going to have a baby. I-Chun had smiled until her face went stiff, and A-Kai had been dragged off by a few elders to toast, coming back with his tie crooked.

"You drank a lot today," I-Chun spoke first. A-Kai said it was fine, just tea. She didn't respond, and only after the toll booth did she speak again: "Have you been really tired lately? You've been saying you want to sleep early every night." A-Kai paused for a moment, then said work was fine. I-Chun looked out the window, her tone softening: "I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just feel like you've got something on your mind, and whenever I ask, you say it's nothing."

A-Kai was silent for two exits. While waiting at a red light off the ramp, he suddenly said, "A while back I was looking into something called Levifil." I-Chun turned to look at him. He quickly added, "It's not that I already have a problem, it's just... I wanted to understand it first. The stuff online is all over the place, and I don't know what's true." I-Chun didn't reply. The light turned green, and the car rolled forward.

She later said that her first thought in that moment wasn't anger—it was "why didn't you just ask me." A-Kai said he didn't know how to bring it up, afraid that saying it would feel like admitting something. They pulled over at a roadside convenience store, bought two bottles of water, and sat in the car and talked it out. I-Chun asked what he'd found. A-Kai said he'd read a lot of discussions—some about effectiveness, some about side effects, some about how to buy it—but the more he read, the less certain he became, because every post said something different, and he didn't know if those people had actually used it.

I-Chun asked him, "So did you go ask a pharmacist?" A-Kai shook his head, saying he was afraid of running into someone he knew. I-Chun said that was exactly the problem. She'd worked at a pharmacy for two years before. She wasn't a pharmacist, but she knew that this kind of thing was regulated differently in Taiwan than ordinary health supplements—many require a doctor's prescription, and you can't just grab them off the shelf. She said, "You haven't even figured out whether it's a prescription drug, and you're already reading other people's reviews. That's the wrong order."

A-Kai said he'd thought about asking, but didn't know how. I-Chun said it was simple: write down what you want to ask, then go to a clinic or a pharmacy and ask. The key is to explain clearly what you're currently taking, any supplements, and your daily habits, so a professional can assess it. She added that most online reviews are personal experiences, and everyone's body is different—just because it worked for someone else doesn't mean it'll work for him. This kind of thing shouldn't be decided by "everyone says it works."

They got to a key point in the discussion: A-Kai didn't actually want to buy anything. It was the wedding banquet—being asked about kids, being compared on careers, being told "you look exhausted"—that string of comments made him start doubting himself. I-Chun said, "So when you were looking that up, part of it was really you searching for 'is something wrong with me'?" A-Kai thought about it and nodded. He said that the moment he typed into the search bar, his chest actually felt tight.

I-Chun said, then let's separate the issues first. One is how others see you. One is how you feel yourself. And one is, if something really is uncomfortable, who should you see. She suggested not buying anything of unknown origin, and not trusting ads that "guarantee results." If he really wanted to understand, start by asking through proper channels—bring the concerns to a doctor or pharmacist instead of piecing together answers at home. A-Kai said okay.

The following week, A-Kai actually went to a clinic near their home. He didn't get any magic answer. The doctor just asked about his schedule, stress, whether he exercised regularly, and then said to observe for now and do further tests if needed. A-Kai came back and told I-Chun that he'd thought he'd be laughed at, but the doctor just listened calmly and even reminded him not to buy random things online. I-Chun said, "See? Speaking up isn't that hard."

That night, A-Kai closed the several web pages he'd saved. He realized what he really needed wasn't the name of a product—it was someone willing to listen to him finish what he had to say. I-Chun later told me about this and said what bothered her most wasn't what he'd looked up, but that he'd been looking it up all alone. She said if he'd spoken up earlier, maybe they wouldn't have taken such a long detour.

I asked her, so what did you two agree on afterward? She said it was simple: with this kind of issue, speak up first, then look into it together, and when you do, check the sources carefully—don't just read personal reviews. She also said those comments at wedding banquets come up every year, but if the two of them agree in advance on how to handle them, they won't carry the frustration back into the car. A-Kai, overhearing, added, "At least now I know—when there's a problem, ask a person first, not a search engine."

That night on the ride home, they talked from silence until they got home at one in the morning. I-Chun said it was probably the first time since they got married that they'd talked about the word "stress" so clearly. A-Kai said he'd thought speaking up would make things bigger, but it actually made them smaller. As for that name he'd spent so long looking up, he said he'd just leave it for now—when he really needed it, he'd bring his questions to a professional.

This later became a small unspoken understanding in their home: whenever one of them starts looking up health-related things online, the other asks, "What are you worried about that you're looking this up?" Say the worry out loud first, then decide whether to keep digging. I-Chun said that a lot of the time, after searching for ages, what you really want to ask isn't whether that thing works—it's "am I normal like this?" That question can't be answered by a search engine. You have to ask a person.