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an-oath · 7 years

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Wait for it.

Picture this. You are standing in the scorching Florida sun awaiting the sweet breath of the oscillating fan. As it makes it pass over your sweat beaded face you look down and gawk at the tan lines your sandals have made on your “once white” feet. You can only imagine what you hair looks like under your faithful straw fedora that hasn’t been removed since 9AM. You stand behind someone that is in great need of deodorant and you stand in front of someone that has an exhausted 8 year old. You realize now that the last time you ate was a churro at the Great American Movie Ride and that was 4 rides ago. You haven’t moved 2 inches and you know that you’re committed for the long haul. You pull out your wrinkled WDW Map and plan your next venture only to repeat this earthly hell over and over again for the rest of the week...you smile at the prospect of that though. You are happy.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t noticed, you’re at Walt Disney World. More specifically, you’re at Hollywood Studios. You stand in a line of people that are awaiting, in your opinion, the most exciting roller coaster in North America. Aerosmith’s Rock N Roller coaster. It’s 1 minute and 22 seconds of an exhilarating 92 KM/H. You can’t wait to see the hologram of Steven Tyler and you can’t wait to hear “Dude, looks like a lady” burst your eardrums as you soar off the launch pad. There’s nothing more exciting than this ride. You look over the gate and see the Tower of Terror and think how much you want to ride it again but then you think how much you really don’t. This is joy for you. This is happiness. Most of your day will be spent in line. You will talk to the people you’re with about the fun facts that you know and wish you knew. You will laugh about the stupid things and smile at the sweet things. Waiting in this line is something you’ve been doing since you were 5 and you’ve perfected the art of the rail lean. Waiting here is nothing. It’s easy if not, blissful. You see the children cry, you see the parents sweat and all you think about is how excited you are to be those parents and how much you loved being that kid. You are a professional WDW line waiter but when it comes to life... waiting is your worst quality. Our entire existence has been molded around waiting in some form. The acknowledgement of our life begins as your Mom stares at a stick for 2 minutes waiting for a pink line. Then it’s waiting 9 months. Then it’s the day and now she’s waiting hours (if not days) for your arrival. The first few minutes of your life are spent with strangers as your Mom waits to hear you cry and waits to hold your slimy body. She waits and watches as you start to move, start to talk and start to become your own person. She waits for you to become something great. Then, you can’t wait to become someone great. You can’t wait for Kindergarten, before you know it it’s Grade 1 and then a day goes by and you walk into Grade 6 with those beautiful braces and freckles for days. Highschool is brutal and you can’t wait for that to be over. Until you graduate, then you spend the time waiting to grow up. You wait for your parents and siblings to start viewing you as an adult, even though you know how terrible you are at it. You wait for the people that take too long to grow up. You wait for your friends. You wait for dreams and you wait for dreams and while you dream you wait for your dreams. You watch as the time goes by and the waiting seems more exhausting than promising. There’s moments when you get excited, moments when you think the waiting has reached it’s peak and then you learn how to wait away heartache and wait away disappointment. You wait for the time that it was easier to wake up and come face to face with a God that promises your heart’s biggest dreams if only you wait on Him. It takes everything in me to expect the best. If I was, by default, a realist, this wouldn’t be so exhausting. Unfortunately, I’ve been a dreamer since the pink line arrived and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I have people that tell me once I’m into something, once I love something, I’m all in. I don’t blink at the prospect of pain - I fly away with the dreams of a future, of success and maybe even a new scene to admire. However, I’ve been feeling like that trait is more of an Achilles’ Heel than I’m comfortable with. Loving anything in this world is complicated. There’s nothing more noticeable than loneliness. Call me naive but I really believe that I wasn’t meant to be a singular anything. I’m like one of those penguins (pingwings) awaiting the arrival of her man to watch her egg and protect her dreams. As time goes by, I realize that waiting is not my weakness - expectation is. I’ve been expecting so much for so long that it has torn an open hole in my heart. The rawness of being disappointed starts to eat away at whatever dreams you have. You only see things for what they are or you start to expect the worst which defines the death of a dreamer. I don’t ever want to be that. I don’t ever want to expect a nightmare when I close my eyes but I feel like this refining season has taken its toll on my little heart. I want to so much to be able to believe God when He tells me that He has a hope and a future for someone like me. Lately, all I can see is the same repetitive lifestyle. It’s become predictable, I’ve become predictable. It’s been hard to even talk to God right now. I don’t doubt His love for me, I know He loves me more than I can even try to imagine, but I do doubt that He’s got me. I doubt that He sees my bruised dreams and my broken heart. I doubt that He’s preparing someone for me. I’ve been waiting for the elusive guy for so long it’s practically my hobby.

I know how wrong that paragraph is but I can’t tell you how true it feels.

I had a conversation with two beautiful people that are getting married next weekend, to say that they are made for each other is an understatement. These two are the dream that I have lived out. These two make waiting easy and so extremely difficult. We talked about whether or not I believed the single life was a gift. I scoffed in my head. A gift? Sure, if you want to give someone a lump of coal. The single life, this season, is the hardest thing I’ve done and to me it seems like the furthest thing from a gift. I want to be able to stand in front of someone and fearlessly be able to give them my entire heart, healthy and beating, my entire dream catalogue, glowing and colorful and everything that makes me...me. I feel as though these things have been weather worn and who I am isn’t who I imagined I would be. The “wife” version of me is so far away from where I’m at right now. The truth is I’m not equipped to be someone’s partner and as I wait and as I learn more about myself I get terrified because I don’t know if I ever could be the wife that I dreamed I would be. I know that I’m not enough for anyone. I know that it’s a false truth to believe that I could fulfill someone’s entire existence on this broken blue marble. I’m always going to be this broken, sloppy shirt individual with the super rude dreams and the tongue twister imagination. I’m not good at waiting and waiting’s not good to me. I need God to do this and I don’t doubt that. I need to trust that God’s got me and I really want to. I need to believe that what I see right in front me is so far away from the reality of my dreams. I need to believe that my dreams can be reality. Life’s not very nice and I’ve never ever expected it to be easy but there’s that little side of me that is waiting and is happy about waiting. The WDW Wait. I want to feel that way as I wait for life. Not even just my person...life in general. I’m fully aware that marriage isn’t the be all end all to life - there will always be another season of waiting and always be another moment I have to trust God through but I want to wait long enough to be able to see the smirk through the line ... through the wait. I know it’s possible - I just feel like it’s going to take awhile. but hey...I’ve got all the time in the world to figure that out. I know that this sounded a little gloom and doom - and I’m sorry for that - but I’ve always wanted this page to be a place where I can vent and throw it all out there to the world. I know that other people are in the same place I am and I know that I don’t have the worst life in the world (far from it.). I share this to you because I want you to be in on my journey as I wait for my life to be molded around God’s timeline and not my own. I know that there will be a day where I can stand beside someone that has the most perfect personality, the best eyes you’ve ever seen and the biggest heart for God you can imagine. I know that the somebody I’m waiting for is worth 10 lifetimes of waiting. I know that he’s few and far between and I don’t say that lightly. I like to think, as hard as its been, that I’ve been protected. There is story after story of premature endings to potential somethings in my life. They’ve all fizzled away and it’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I always pray, every time I start to feel the “bubble” of excitement, “ God, if this isn’t it - I don’t want it. Take it away.” and every time, He does. That’s how I know He has me. It’s been too frequent to be a coincidence - I know I’m not that terrible. :P Anyways, thanks for reading, if you’ve lasted this long and I pray that whatever worn out dreams you have and whatever waiting season you are in - I pray that today, you take a deep breath, just like I did, and imagine the reality where your dreams are unveiled and your waiting takes a turn for the better. I know that’s the best way to do it. Wait and wait and wait and wait and expect the best. Always. Otherwise, you’re just a tumbleweed in a ghost town of dreams unfulfilled. <3 SQ

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disorientedblog-archive · 5 years

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Arrival, Return (Stay the Course) November 2018

by Erin Wong / photo: Sam Kay

After a timid knock, I peer around the corner at my boss glaring into her computer. Hey, I say softly in fragile Chinese. Can I have a minute?

She nods, and waves me into the meeting room, barely pausing to look up. What’s up?

I have to take a call, I murmur, and continue to stare at her, still standing in the doorway, a child clinging to her mother’s skirt. Her face opens as her eyes find mine, and she breaks into an empathetic smile.

Should we maybe take the call together?

My shoulders relax as I settle next to her and dial. A voice answers and meets my own with surprise, so I rush to introduce my colleague before virtually disappearing amidst the rapid Mandarin that ensues. At first I listen in earnest, concentrating on the clipped music as someone might grasp at fading sound. But eventually, as a child would, I allow my mind to wander in between the complex corridors of their language.

For apprentices in Chinese – and I imagine many types of discourse – phone calls pose the additional challenge of conversing without the unspoken apology of a bowed head and series of smiles, without the diversion of humor or charisma. Yet these buffers serve of critical importance, because in hiding my appearance, I experience both ordeal and private blessing. We avoid the essential, mystified moment in which my fellow observes, wait, but you look Chinese, and I must say, yes, well I am Chinese; and yet I miss the parrying emphatic pause in which I reclaim a sort of common ground – and so I’m here to keep on learning.

Sometimes we never arrive at understanding. This first moment can extend anywhere from a grunt or shrug to the entirety of our relationship. One can never know whether these new encounters will bring a gush of welcome or a sniff of contempt, whether I am allowed the agency of an American expat or reduced to the daughter of negligent parents. I am given only one faithful assurance: that I am an oddity in Beijing, and my existence here is defined and disrupted by the ever-present dues of a past divergence.

—

For the first fourteen years of my life, I thought miraculously little of this divergence – that of my ancestors’ departure from a distant continent to the one I call home.

My childhood took place in suburban Seattle, insulated by way of entry into affluent neighborhoods and private schools. My parents folded easily into western convention: my mother, a Hong Kong native with British education, who moved to the Midwest at the age of sixteen; my father, a third generation immigrant, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. On Thanksgiving weekend, they would drive my brother and me down to Portland, where we’d bake pies with white aunts and uncles, then sneak into the movies with a troupe of Hapa cousins. White America bore my first friends, role models and educators, the first romantic rhapsody when a boy takes your hand and asks you to dance. And in the darkness of a grade school gymnasium, it was possible to believe myself both seen and invisible.

Once removed from this vacuum, however, I began to see etchings of color. Between packing my childhood into boxes and stepping off the plane in Hong Kong, this epiphany gave way to a series of unshakable patterns and behavior as high school flooded around me, like rapids at a crossroads of culture.

I pursued familiarity in those from the U.S., with whom I shared a cadence of language. Though I oscillated between overlapping groups of Korean, Hong Kong, and American classmates, I related most to the latter, and shamefully attempted to win their allegiance at the expense of the others. More than once, I sat in earnest discomfort, listening to new friends mock the accented English or alien pop music of another student—a practice I could not justify, not only for the acceptance I enjoyed in Seattle, but also because Hong Kong was clearly a part of me. I knew this now in the arms of extended family, and in the mirror, as my placement of features echoed in the millions outside. Still, I grappled to retain the exempt invisibility I once possessed. When asked if I cared for the eccentricities of other Asians, I repeated without hesitation, no way, you’re right, that is weird.

The city seemed to echo our high school hierarchy, with whiteness concentrated in office buildings and elite clubs, while local Chinese manned the wet markets and sustained the service economy. Although padded in privilege, I watched without direct harm the results of a system in which social capital stretched along intertwined axes, a system that promised my family and I would forever place below the utmost echelon. This dichotomy, though imperfect, proved just enough to insert itself insidiously in the mind of an adolescent. And in my youth, I learned to hate this part of myself, to hate this new environment that forced me to forfeit worldly access.

Thus I retreated to the U.S. for the remainder of high school, and learned to hide these aspects well. I distanced myself from Chinese America, eager to rewrite statistical bias and failing to find solace there. Though I flexed the ability to feign whiteness, I could no longer ignore stereotypes or prejudice; but this time, rather than implicate others, I resorted to a silent resignation.

In college, it was not uncommon for a partner to say something alarming mid-tryst, where vulnerability lets loose the laws of good conduct. On one occasion, I sank into the embrace of distant friend, and he stopped to stare at me hungrily, his eyes flickering in the dark so like the freedom of that first dance. Then he leaned in and whispered drunkenly, God I’ve missed Asians, with all the tender calamity of a husky sweet nothing. Nausea coursed through me, but I could no longer tell whether rage and revulsion pulsed outward at my accomplice or inward, against my own body, as we continued on.

I recall lying awake well into the night by his side, imagining a world in which I put on my clothes and walk out of his life without looking back. In this world, I call the Asian American friends I do not have and they tell me people like him know nothing of beauty, beauty like a deep purple bruise pressed into a rabid strength born of affliction.

Years later, walking through a park in south central Los Angeles, a friend would turn to me and say in thoughtful reflection, you know, I think we might be the only white people here. To which I could only throw up my hands and laugh a small, triumphant laugh, for it had been my private mission all these years to erase my ethnicity completely. But when this goal was at last accomplished, I knew whiteness only as something in which I would never take part.

—

Despite my best efforts to hide our relation, China refused to keep quiet. As the nation came to occupy more of the global stage, I wore the threat of its industrious population like a badge across my face; and when asked to represent views I did not know, for the first time, I found I wanted to know. Of course, I faced a fraught relationship to China, with part-time inhabitance in an autonomous territory and the language capacity of an inattentive student. Yet the call of awe and adventure, ignited by my years as an unwilling envoy, convinced me that acceptance lay in wait for wayward diaspora. After two decades in hiding, I took the leap – and shattered myself across the streets of Beijing.

The first blow came from my colleagues at the international office of my fellowship. Though I arrived in the midst of other fresh-faced Americans, and repeatedly offered assurance that I did not speak well, some combination of generosity and general bias led most to continue as though I understood them perfectly. It was an active battle to emphasize the opposite, and the first few days I carried an open secret that somehow only I believed. Then, all at once, the full story broke open across the kitchen table.

As the conversation shifted into comical banter, I smiled uncertainly in a room full of laughter, causing a colleague to turn to me and ask, so how much of what we say can you understand? To which I replied meekly, at least 50-percent? An unreasonably high estimate at the time, but one that felt necessary to dampen the sting of an ousted charade. I watch as their collective expression molds around this new information, hovering in the shape of disappointment as we stare into our food. The color that crawls into my face feels just as unbidden as this tide of assumptions; I entered the role of imposter for no other reason than my face, and the immigrant version of a once-native last name. Over time, we develop an equilibrium at which both Chinese and English offer buoyance for friendship, but this moment of mortification buries itself into my subconscious, germinating into a strain of social anxiety.

I start to avoid getting lunch in large groups, leave meetings early, smile and wave instead of stopping for small talk. I ignore invitations and let new friends slide, an introversion so unlike myself that I question my motives for moving here. Somewhere, far beneath the waking mind, I acknowledge this reaction as self-defense, an attempt to buffer the sadness of what feels like failure – to my family, my heritage, but foremost, my own expectations. The city had opened fire on the naïve notion that I shared anything in common with its populace.

In an ironic twist of solidarity, compassion comes in the form of other foreigners. Yet the world continued to haunt me in a way it did not them – waiters, drivers, front desks and phone calls, always the same incredulous expression, but you never learned Mandarin, or even Cantonese? I reluctantly empathize with the opposition, as invisibility returns at the cost of silence. China is, in its majority, comprised of those who have never met someone like me; I am a surprise, and a cliché—a student who didn’t study hard enough the classical art of knowing oneself.

It’s as though we approach understanding on winding highway, and at every stage, one has the opportunity to stop or find a route elsewhere. Sometimes it’s me, exhausted with the same explanation time and again; sometimes it’s my collocutor, daunted by the prospect of additional patience in engagement. In Beijing, my anxiety and resentment compound with local surprise and disinterest, such that the off ramps double in number. And it is this looming dispassion that scares me most. I am met with the possibility that I alone without my words, without a presupposition of innocence and significance, do not warrant pursuit in camaraderie. This, compounded with the towering notion that learning Chinese might simply be too hard, that cross-cultural closeness might never coalesce, forms the paralyzing and insurmountable fear that I might never find footing in a world I had come to believe I must belong.

—

After a year of emotional tumult, I find myself back in the amicable throng of my father’s family, thirteen cousins of varied age, build and character grinning at each other as we prepare dinner for our parents. My grandmother sits silently at the dining table, watching us work with an absent-minded smile.

She and I, we rarely spoke in my childhood. Affection translated instead through heaps of steaming food and the press of an extra sweater, wide smiles across the dining room table. She might mutter snippets of advice in English, or I’d overhear her converse in Cantonese, but she largely remained a fixed point of silence, always with the same short grey hair in contrast to the brilliant floral patterns nestled around her. No more than a week away from Beijing, I realize that my time abroad may have opened a new channel of understanding between us.

Mah Mah, I offer gently in Mandarin, sitting beside her under the pretext of cutting olives, I visited your campus last year in Beijing. She turns slowly, her smile no longer absent-minded. The university, you mean? I was studying to be a doctor there.

Yes, I know. I saw the lake too, the famous one, and walked around the gardens; it’s beautiful there.

Yes, it is beautiful. I lived there for almost four years, she says, nodding, her eyes clouding over. I had heard her story before, wherein she graduated top of her class, moved from rural Guangzhou to university in Beijing, and on the brink of becoming doctor, the tremors of revolution convinced her parents to send her away.

When she looks at me again, I feel that she is seeing me for the first time, a memory on the opposite shore of eight decades. I watch her on the western bank, wondering what she must see in her progeny, none of whom remember her native language, most who will never know the depth of her story. From the east, she watches an alternate universe where, with the blessings of privilege and peace, she lives freely in the urban epicenter of her mother country.

I am lucky, I blurt suddenly, and I am grateful to be there now.

She blinks, and she forgives me. Well, I imagine it’s quite different from when I was there.

We continue on this shared wavelength, onto other places we used to live, other things we used to do – church, piano, painting – stories long since tucked away. We talk of the new Asian American support center opening up in Portland, an enterprise I once would have disregarded, but now declare a necessity. We sit quietly on the edge of a bustling kitchen, and my grandfather emerges from the ruckus to place his hand on my shoulder.

For a moment, I am transported from the world around us, in which we prepare a feast of Mexican food at a summer lodge beneath Mt. Hood, where hip hop booms within the walls and Frisbees kiss the cedar pine, away from the glamor and sex of America, into the shadow world on which our story is built. In this world, my grandparents fought tooth and claw to keep their family of seven afloat, working night shifts at the Flower Drum, fetching bread ends from the bakery to feed the coming day. From long hours as a waitress at the Sichuanese diner to his white uniform in the Second World War, from the brief exchange of faded pictures that determined who they both would marry, all the way back between the mountains of Guangdong, where, for the first time, this story began – I watch in my mind’s eye as though to remember.

I gaze at my grandmother, and into the decades of pain and resilience that sit like a well dug miles deep behind those eyes. At the bottom, I see myself in Beijing, scrabbling to find a way to the surface, to recover some semblance of acceptance. But in fact, I belong nowhere else upon arrival; my grandparents labored for years to escape that world, their sacrifice evident in our assimilation sprouting from the ashes of departure.

Shrieks of joy come from the living room, where my youngest cousin in being shaken upside down by my brother, pulling me out of my reverie. I am tempted to hide, and cry, but the hand on my shoulder squeezes, and my grandmother makes a soft noise, 嗯. She watches the tousle of grandchildren on the carpet, laughing in tiny, shaking cackle.

—

I come from a long line of irrepressible immigrant energy. My mother’s grandfather, an entrepreneurial boy from Haining, who built his fortune on fine cloth and wrote history in Hong Kong hours south of the revolution; his first daughter, on the passenger ship home from college, fell in love with an introverted academic who would whisk her from Texas to Canada before growing roots back east again. My father’s grandfather, a thin bookkeeper from the outskirts of Guangzhou, answered the call of his uncle’s fish cannery and opened an import store on the Oregon coast. He and his wife, and their children, and their children, lived through a bloody America that bore exclusions acts and riots and murder before packaging the Chinese alongside distinct fellows in a single Asian entity that made fervent gains in wealth, education, and social grace. On this battleground, they fought and won survival, amid violent slurs and exoticization, the isolation and certain despair, persisting such that one day, decades down the line, we might claim this land our own. And on Thanksgiving weekend, my brother, mother, father and I drive down to Portland together, to reunite a circle of loved ones and rest atop our tired empire, buttressed by the nobility of forefathers who simply put their heads down and beat on.

On the plane ride home to Beijing, a strange insignificance arrives, like that of a single thread, braided into an intricate fabric stretched halfway around the world. I am but one of many millions of migrants who were granted safe passage between these nations. Not only this, but other identities in both have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of darker tragedy; to seize up in light of indelicate acceptance is to forsake the brave knowledge of those before: discomfort and rejection are the pedagogy of self-acceptance; oppression, the window to truth. Like my forebears from Asia, I travel with agency, and with respect to their decision, I bow in the humility of return.

In my second year, I find footholds in friendship, working to bridge the distance from expat to local. Passersby still stare as I struggle to read, but I concentrate instead on my teacher’s rounded smile, the way she pedals her hands to signify balance between characters. I catch dinner with an old friend, and she tells me she hears a new confidence in this voice; confidence, perhaps not in language, but in the art of knowing oneself, knowing that my first name and face represent the south, knowing why my great-grandparents sewed gold into their clothing and once fled far from here, knowing the dignity, grit, and unparalleled intrigue of my Chinese colleagues and friends – uncovering at long last, a story to expound my existence, and a reason to continue its writing.

I don’t claim to meet expectations, but I do lay claim to a life here, swimming my way back to an identity I must earn, paying dues for the past divergence, day by day, character by character. And acceptance, when it does come, rains down with a depth of understanding more honest than any identity crisis, one that says this ‘white-ass’ Chinese American bit the bullet and made a home for herself, that much closer to the middle between two worlds.

Erin Wong served as a Princeton in Asia fellow in Beijing from 2017-2018 and continues to live there, working at an environmental NGO.

#China

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romancevsreality-blog · 7 years

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vanderpump rules, season five, episode twenty-one: most. boring. finale. ever.

We’ve reached the end.

Hello darkness, my old friend.

I feel like I’ve been hit by a tornado, and that tornado is the drunken mess that is Sexy Waiters, or Vanderpump Rules. And now the tornado has passed and what am I left with? An unhappy marriage and a bunch of shitty friends AND a mess. I shouldn’t be saying that about Katie and Tom’s wedding, it wasn’t a mess. Not as much of a mess as it could have been - at least Katie didn’t wear a crop top wedding dress like Scheana did.

The episode opens with the bridal procession, and Tom is already ready to cry when he realizes he’s not marrying Lisa Vanderpump, he’s getting married BY Lisa Vanderpump. His suit isn’t nearly as hideously green as I imagined. He does blend into the background a little too much. He dramatically decides not to read his written vows and then takes it back - LOL, CLASSIC TOM - and we heard that Tom was the one chasing Katie, not the other way around. Everyone’s crying. Even Lisa Vanderpump’s crying.

I’M NOT FUCKING CRYING, THOUGH. HUZZAAAAAAH.

Tom Sandoval can’t stop thinking about how much he loves Tom Schwartz. He uses their dog as a tissue. Katie speeds through her vows and I barely get them, but they’re perfectly generic, just like her. Katie and Tom are married. They did it!

They’re Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz.

I think we’re all shocked.

Stassi mentions that Katie and Tom are the glue that keeps the group together, and she’s right. And that’s the reason why Tom married her, because he would lose all his friends if he didn’t. Kristen’s got wedding fever, too, and she wants Carter (blargh) to put a ring on it so she can stop wearing her fake engagement ring. Are people just not happy with claddaugh rings anymore?

Lisa and Tom Sandoval sit and talk about how Tom Sandoval wants to marry Ariana, and Tom’s tentative. They’ve never talked about it. Of all the couples on this show, I actually want them to get married. I think their wedding could be incredible, and their life together would be incredible. Lisa brings up the possibility of Tom Sandoval becoming a partner in Lisa’s new bar, and Tom is shocked. I mean, I get it. But of all of these people - Tom is probably the best option.

We’re treated to obnoxious speeches from 2/3rds of The Triplets Schwartz, Tom Sandoval, and Stassi. Stassi swears, of course. THeir band is a weird B-52s wannabe who wears yacht hats. Again: this wedding is exactly the Pinterest Nightmare I imagined it would be. Lisa forces Peter to have Stassi deliver her dinner, so all the good stuff they had going on last week is going straight out the window, I suppose. Lisa always wants to assert herself in her rightful place1.

Jax takes Brittany aside and drops the bomb that he doesn’t things are going well for them anymore. He loves her wfor who she is, and WHAT KIND OF PERSON PRETENDS TO BREAK UP WITH SOMEONE AT A WEDDING? Instead, he reassures her that if and when he decides to get married, it’ll be to her. I mean, good? I’m glad a guy that’s so old he could have invented divorce decide that now is the time to get married, I guess. But still - shit or get off the pot, Jax.

Tom and Ariana sit alone, and Tom reveals that Lisa wants him to be a partner in her new venture. Ariana cries. Tom cries. I love them so much. Tom mentions the idea that yeah, he loves her, he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. When he asks if they could begin the discussions of getting possibly married sometime in the future, Ariana’s still like, “WELL...... I MEAN.....” She doesn’t like the idea of getting married, but doesn’t want to let Tom down. I’m on Team Ariana about this. There was a long period of my life where I was convinced I would never get married. But then you meet someone who introduces that entire thought process into your mind and... yeah.

It’s hard to say no when someone says they want to marry you and spend the rest of their life with you. It’s hard to say no to feeling wanted.

Tom and Katie cut the cake, and Tom puts a dollop of frosting on Katie’s nose and she responds by trying to throw a whole hunk of cake at him. Classic Katie. Forever overreacting.

Lisa takes Sandoval aside and discusses the possibility of Schwartz being brought on as a partner in the bar, as well, with Sandoval handling back of house and the bar program, and Schwartz representing the face of the brand. She wants to name it TomTom, because clearly Vanderpump doesn’t know that TomTom Club gave us one of the best, most sampled pieces of music in modern history. TOMTOM CLUB ALREADY EXISTS, AND THEY’RE BETTER THAN ANYTHING THESE FOOLS COULD COME UP WITH. Sandoval loves the name, and Schwartz is drunk. He comes over and rejects the entire notion of being the face of a restaurant. Tom, who has basically not worked for five years, is being handed a full-funded restaurant and he can’t handle the responsibility already. I mean, if I were Katie I would be pissed - I’ve been working for Lisa for how long and my husband, who can’t even shake a cocktail shaker without having anxiety, is getting a restaurant?! Lisa’s making sure that these people are still employed by her and that this show gets another season. I see your moves, Lisa.

Stassi interrupts Ariana while she’s taking snapchats and asks why she’s never in them. Ariana can’t even pretend and is like “oh, my phone died!!! Sorrrrrrrrryyyyy.” Stassi asks if Ariana thinks she’s annoying, and Ariana’s like, “dude, you’re setting me up to fail with these loaded questions.” Stassi really cannot handle the fact that someone doesn’t like her and is open about it. She comments about that when Ariana’s mean to her, it hurts her feelings - but she doesn’t ask for Ariana to stop being mean to her, she asks for Ariana to start liking her. There’s a big difference between the two of them. Ariana can stop being mean to her, but that doesn’t mean she likes her at all. Ariana admits that she’s got other things going on in her life and doesn’t have time to expell the emotional labor that Stassi requires in being her friend. Much like my father, Stassi’s too much of a narcissist to realize that not everyone has to like you. Ariana cries because she’s got a ton of stuff on her plate. They mutually decide they’re acquaintances who would really like to murder each other.

THEN TOM SANDOVAL PLAYS THE TRUMPET.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!2

Lisa Vanderpump signs the wedding certificate, Jax says he “accidentally” slept with Kristen three times, and Katie’s “reception dress” is just as hideous as her wedding dress. Katie and Tom are married. Lisa’s happy to go back to Los Angeles. This episode is dullsville.

THREE MONTHS LATER, THOUGH.

Of course, because the producers needed to get coverage of the Shay/Shay divorce, we get a shot of Scheana, on the verge of tears, driving over to Villa Rosa and leaving a voicemail. I hate to admit it because she’s clearly in an emotional state, but Scheana looks the best she’s looked all season. It’s mostly because she’s not covered in pounds and pounds of makeup, methinks, but she also just looks defeated. Scheana talks to Lisa about how he disappears for days at a time, they’re barely speaking, and he hasn’t stayed with her in two weeks because he’s been staying at his parents’. Lisa rightfully calls their relationship bullshit, because if my husband went missing for six days, I wouldn’t be home when he returned. Sorry. She found out he’s not sober - he’s been taking Adderall - and she woke up one morning and found out he took $7000 from her, leaving her with $32. She’s done. Their marriage is done.

Thank god, though. Back at the Shay/Shay apartment, Shay is high as hell. You can just see it in his eyes - he’s on something. I mean, for Christ’s sakes, he has his ears pierced and she had no idea. Shay missed Scheana the entire time he was gone, but also can acknowledge the inherent fuckedupness of having to disappear for six days in order to feel like you’re being seen by you wife. You can get away with that shit for a day or two, Shay, but really - call your fucking wife. That’s what being in a relationship is about.

They’re both on the losing side of this, unfortunately. Scheana is selfish, emotionally immature, and naive, and Shay is a drug addict who needs to be around sober people and only sober people and he can’t do that with her.3 He denies being on drugs, and he enjoys being in the studio more than being with her. He doesn’t like her friends, or how her family treats him.

But Scheana’s over it. She’s going to visit a lawyer, and they’re getting divorced. The next exchange actually left me gasping:

Scheana: “Nothing lasts forever.”

Shay (crying, pointing between the two of them): “This does.”

God damn it.

Scheana pretty much tells him his room is a mess and his clothes are in a pile, but he can go. The season ends on a sad fucking note.

Random Observations from the Desk of Amanda:

This is the weakest season finale this show’s ever had. Blah, blah, blah, boring. Remember when Kristen punched James?

Sorry, won’t cover the reunions. I hate them. For reunion coverage, head over to Brian Moylan at Vulture!

Apparently the Danish girl who told them to kiss Katie was on Mr. Robot! That’s the closest to prestige this show will come.

SEE YOU MAY 23 FOR THE BACHELORETTE <3

Again, the best con ever pulled was promising these people wealth and fame while still forcing them to work for Lisa. Stassi will always be under her thumb. ↩︎

Not even going to acknowledge the fact that Carter talked to Kristen about having sex that night and making a baby. That baby would be satanic. ↩︎

Also, Scheana’s nails when she’s crying - girl I thought she was going to put an eye out with those monstrosities. ↩︎

#vanderpump rules

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