In my household, pink sauce is a staple. My husband is Venezuelan, and like many in his culture, he swears by the stuff which is equal parts ketchup and mayo, whipped together until they blend into a perfectly smooth blush. It goes on arepas, burgers, fries and anything, really. It’s sweet. It’s creamy. It’s familiar. It’s comfort in a squeeze bottle.

And yet, every time I see it, I can’t help but think about how impossible it would be to separate those two condiments again once they’ve been mixed. You can’t pull out the ketchup without scooping up the mayo. You can’t strain out the mayo without dragging along the red. You can’t untangle the ingredients without losing the sauce.

That, I’ve realized, is what it’s like trying to separate who I really am from who I’ve had to be to survive.

See, when you grow up neurodivergent or autistic, ADHD, hard of hearing, or living under any number of invisible experiences then you don’t just become who you are. You become who you are allowed to be. And even that becomes a negotiation. A recipe built not on taste, but on what won’t get you punished. What won’t get you rejected. What won’t make you too much.

So we blend. We swirl together the parts of ourselves we think the world can accept like our humor, our intelligence, our helpfulness all with the parts we wish we could leave behind. The shutdowns. The spirals. The need for quiet. The sensitivity. The “weirdness.” The grief of knowing we’re different and not always celebrated for it.

We create a version of ourselves that we think will taste better to others. And then we serve it up. Smiling.

And if we’re praised for being adaptable, resilient, self-aware then we learn to keep mixing. To keep smoothing out the sharp edges. To keep masking our needs. To keep pretending we’re okay with the heat and the noise and the overstimulation. That we like the sauce this way.

But deep down, many of us start to wonder what was the original flavor?

Where does the trauma response end and the real me begin?

What is a mask I chose, and what is a scar I didn’t?

What’s hard, so hard, is that masking and trauma aren’t just add-ons. They’re emulsifiers. They bind everything together so tightly that we start to lose the ability to recognize what was there before. Sometimes I try to recall the first time I said “I’m fine” when I wasn’t. The first time I ignored my sensory discomfort because I didn’t want to be difficult. The first time I forced myself to make eye contact or laugh along or push through instead of honoring the ache in my chest that begged me to pause.

But those moments are blurry now. Blended.

That’s the trick of pink sauce, isn’t it? It’s delicious. It works. And if you grew up in a world that told you ketchup is too loud and mayo is too soft, pink sauce is a miracle. It gets you through. It gets you fed. It helps you belong. But at some point, you start to wonder what if I like the ketchup on its own? What if the mayo isn’t weak, just misunderstood? What if the things I’ve been told to hide are actually the most flavorful parts of me?

And what if my authentic self isn’t hiding under the mask, but tangled inside it?

This is the heartbreak of unmasking. It’s not just about showing the world who you are. It’s about rediscovering it yourself. It’s about peeling back layers you thought were personality and realizing they were protection. It’s about asking things like what was I before the blending began?

It’s terrifying. It’s messy. But it’s also necessary.

Because there’s no freedom in pink sauce when it’s the only option you’ve ever had. True identity isn’t what survives the mixing. It’s what you return to when no one’s watching. It’s the flavor you keep dreaming of long after everyone else is full.

And here’s the part I didn’t expect…because sometimes, the world doesn’t need you to pick ketchup or mayo. Sometimes, your unique combination is the point. But you deserve to CHOOSE that blend INTENTIONALLY. Not out of survival, but out of truth.

So if you’re like me and you’ve spent your whole life making yourself more palatable, more manageable, more pink sauce than person then I want to say this…

You don’t have to live in that bottle forever. You can taste-test your way back to yourself. You can figure out what’s you, what’s trauma, and what’s just tiredness pretending to be personality. You can reclaim your original recipe.

​And maybe, just maybe, you can discover that you were never too much. You were just too bold for bland palettes.