hot sauce is fucking up our lives
so gorgeous
Like many people, I love hot sauce. I don´t want to call myself an addict, I´m still in denial of that, but I might come close to one.
I put hot sauce on everything. Eggs? Hot sauce. Avocado toast? Hot sauce. Rice and veggies? Hot sauce. Burritos? Obviously. A perfectly good meal that already tastes good? Probably still hot sauce. I don’t even know when I started doing this.
I don´t remember the first time my taste buds came in touch with hot sauce (an addict would remember their first time, right?), and I don´t remember the first time I bought my own.
But I do remember that I reached a point where meals without hot sauce started tasting off, something just seemed not right.
I went through a so called hot-sauce-detox-phase where I refused to buy hot sauce until I couldn´t take it anymore. Because if I was addicted, I wouldn´t be able to stop, right? That worked out quite well, until I noticed my flatmate kept a gorgeous bottle of hot sauce in his part of the fridge.
Well, I won´t go into detail about what happened next. But I do think my hot sauce intake decreased drastically, and I´m way more mindful when it comes to consuming hot sauce. Only if a meal is in desperate need of hot sauce, I’ll commit the crime of stealing my innocent flatmate’s hot sauce.
Then, the other day, I was sitting in my room thinking about everything and nothing at a point where I should´ve just gone to bed and slept already.
What if eating hot sauce keeps me from experiencing beautiful things in life? What if I sit in a restaurant and order a delicious meal, only to drown it in hot sauce because I don’t know how to taste it without anymore?
(Side note, I didn’t do any research on whether hot sauce is actually numbing our taste buds, but to me, it makes perfect sense, and the fact that things without hot sauce taste off kind of underlines that.)
Taking the string of thoughts further, what if I have been pouring hot sauce not only over my meals but over my whole life?
Because in times like these, we always need more. Avocado toast isn’t enough, it needs a kick, some hot sauce, same with every other meal.
Maybe that’s what happened to us too.
We have become so accustomed to intensity that ordinary things don’t feel like enough anymore. We always want something more intense, more taste, more dopamine, more excitement, more drama, more success, more things to consume.
We unlearned indulgence because we always strive for more, just being present isn’t enough anymore.
Maybe we have a relationship that’s actually great. But suddenly, we want high effort, princess treatment, someone who makes us feel like the main character, because that’s what we keep seeing online. And out of the blue, we create problems where there weren’t any.
Maybe a normal, healthy relationship suddenly tastes boring because we’ve gotten used to love in TikToks tasting like hot sauce.
Maybe we have a job. According to social media, it needs to be our passion, otherwise, we’re doing it wrong. We need side hustles, find our purpose, and tap into our full potential, a job can’t just be a job anymore.
Maybe we used to be happy with the way we looked. But according to social media, we need to maxx our looks, become the hottest version of ourselves. Fix this. Improve that. Eat our body weight and more in protein every single fucking day.
A normal life suddenly feels like a life we´re living wrong.
And then there’s the other thing we use hot sauce for: numbing. So called negative emotions should better be numbed. We constantly reach for something so we don’t have to taste whatever is actually in front of us.
Because silence is a taste we don’t like.
So we reach for TikTok. Instagram. Netflix. Dating Apps. Alcohol. Drugs. Work. Music. Shopping. Podcasts. Doomscrolling. Everything to fill the void, to avoid feeling discomfort.
We minimize the potential discomfort of a bad meal by putting hot sauce on top because somehow, it fixes even the worst meals. In hot sauce we trust. We don´t want surprises that could lead to feeling something we don´t want to feel.
So we drink hot sauce as if it was soda every single day.
And in the end, we don’t know what real life tastes like anymore if we don’t drown it in hot sauce.
Okay, I don’t really know where I wanted to go with this. I don’t want to open up a whole philosophical debate about modern life. And in the end, it’s not that deep. It’s just hot sauce, after all. I just felt like writing about something I’m passionate about. (Hot sauce.)
Writing this brought me joy. I’m listening to The Clash and I’m thinking about hot sauce. That’s it.