I did it because Chrissy Teigen told me to. Roxane Gay Tweeted about doing it a lot, too.

So, unemployed and unwilling to commit to full-time freelance work because freelancing is messy and unpredictable and imposter syndrome is real, I cozied into my favorite corner of the couch one wintery weekday afternoon and watched my first episode of Bravo’s hit reality show Vanderpump Rules.

For four, five, sometimes six hours a day — with my husband at his office and my dog fast asleep at my side — I’d watch Lisa Vanderpump’s crew of botox-filled misfits scream at one another during their shifts at SUR, a West Hollywood restaurant designed to look like an Anne Geddes photo shoot where all the swaddled sleeping babies have been swapped out for slurring 20-somethings.

At first the show was distracting, the hollow white noise I needed to drown out the anguish running through my head. Then it was empowering. “At least I’m not as bad as those assholes,” I’d tell myself as I blew off another email from an editor or text from my mom.

Watching TV felt like the only thing I could do because I could not fuck up watching TV. Everything else was, as I saw it, on the verge of disaster. My job hunt? Fruitless. Finding the courage to send cold pitches to new editors? Impossible. Returning texts from friends and family in a timely manner? I couldn’t do that right either. (Sorry, buds.)

So I watched. Seven seasons, 145 episodes, 101-and-a-half hours — I watched.

I watched Jax admit to cheating on Stassi. I watched Sandoval admit to cheating on Kristen. I watched Jax admit to cheating on Stassi with Kirsten who was cheating on Sandoval while Sandoval was in the other room. I watched Scheana and Shay get engaged, married and divorced. I watched Schwartz admit to cheating on Katie and I watched Katie verbally abuse Schwartz and of course I watched (and cried a little, too) when Schwartz and Katie got married in Season 5, just a few episodes after she publicly insulted his dick.

There were deaths and addictions and so many weird shirts with the shoulders cut out of them. It was dramatic, it was madness and I couldn’t look away. Chrissy Teigen and Roxane Gay are rarely wrong.

But as Season 7 was wrapping up — after watching Stassi and Ariana finally become friends and seeing Sandoval and Schwartz find success in their new (tragically Steampunk-themed) bar — watching Vanderpump Rules became more than comforting. It became encouraging.

For the cast of Vanderpump Rules, these seven seasons were filmed throughout some of the most pivotal years of their lives — the show premiered in 2013 with the latest season wrapping up in May of this year. But for me — sad and watching from my couch — their journeys took just weeks.

They’d fuck up, apologize, forgive one another, they’d fuck up again, apologize again and forgive one another again — at least until the reunion shows — and seeing Stassi, Katie, Schwartz, Sandoval, Jax, Brittany, Ariana et al. make it through their mostly self-created, tequila-fueled storms helped me realize that I even though I, too, have fucked up, I’ve recovered. And I’ll fuck up again and I’ll recover again!

The bad news: I’m no better than any of them. The good news: I’m no worse than any of them, either.

I was not prepared to become emotionally attached to a reality show, but here we are. I’m OK, and goddamn Vanderpump Rules of all things helped me realize it. Sometimes the champagne lands in the glass and sometimes it lands on your face (right Schwartz?), but the point is, on Vanderpump Rules, the champagne is always flowing.

We are all always still flowing.

So pop the cork, motherfuckers — if Jax can keep truckin’, so can you.