When Did a Tomato Stop Tasting Like a Tomato?

I keep catching myself saying "back in the day…" lately.

It’s a strange phrase for someone who doesn't think of herself as nostalgic to keep reaching for. But here we are, and I might as well lean into it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Back in the day, you could leave a comment on someone's blog, and it meant something.

I used to read Havi's site and see the same names showing up in the comments, over and over. Not people trying to be strategic (sneaky) about it, not leaving a comment as a backdoor way to get you to click through to their own thing. Just - here's a thought, you sparked it, I'm saying it back and adding my own twist on it. I'm still in touch with someone I met that way. Years later. We were just connecting as human beans. It felt real in a way that most things don't now.

Back in the day, you could buy a tomato and it would taste like a tomato.

Same with a green bell pepper, or an onion. You'd pay what it should cost (which was way more reasonable then), bring it home, take a bite, and it would taste exactly like it was meant to taste.

Now, half the time you get it home and it tastes like nothing, or worse, like chemicals. The thing itself has been buried under what it was supposed to look like on the shelf. Red enough. Round enough. Unblemished. Whether it actually tasted like a tomato became beside the point, I guess.

Back in the day, most of us were more likely to just show up as we were.

There’s a particular person on YouTube that I follow. We’ll call her Barb.

I have been following her for years, and have really loved her content. Mostly because she just shows up.

No embellishment, no performance, quirks and all.

When she pulled all her videos earlier this year, after saying she'd never do that again, I was frustrated. And I understood her reasons for doing it too, both in the same breath. It wasn't inconsistency. It was her actually listening to what was true for her in that moment instead of what she'd promised the internet six months prior. And then she came back, (wonder of wonders!) and the relief I felt was almost embarrassing in its size. I'd missed her more than I'd let myself admit.

I don't think I've ever let myself trust that who I am, as I actually am, is enough.

Not extraordinary - that word's never even crossed my mind for myself.

Just, enough.

Acceptable, even unedited.

There's always this reflex to embellish, to add something, to make sure the version of me that's visible is a little more palatable than the raw one. And watching Barb not do that, watching her just exist in public without the extra sparkles, I feel the gap between that and my own instinct so clearly it almost hurts.

I think all three of these are the same thing when it comes right down to it. The blog post comments, the humble tomato, Barb. Somewhere along the way we learned that the real version of something isn't enough on its own. It needs to be optimized. Punched up. Made shinier or more useful or more palatable before it's allowed out into the world. And that's true of tomatoes and blog comments and, apparently, of us.

Kening Zhu wrote something recently that's been sitting with me. She said this about rebuilding her website:

"...this week, the left side of my brain is firing in all cylinders, and I'm single-mindedly obsessed with redesigning / replanting / reimagining my webhouse, this digital vessel where I store everything, where I go to, sometimes, in order to remind myself who I am."

Did you get that? (Because it took me a second…)

A digital home built to remind yourself who you are. Not to convince anyone else of anything. Not to fluff up your own competence or extraordinariness or even palatability. Just - a place you can go to remember.

I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. But that's what I'm building here.

Not a more embellished version of me. Not a shinier tomato. Just the actual thing, unvarnished, on the shelf - trusting that it's allowed to taste like what it is.