The Best Friend Experience with Jenny Mollen

Last week, the internet called me a child molester for posting a photo of myself holding my son. The picture was taken on a Monday night after he returned from a weekend away. There’s something devastating about realizing your children can survive without you, that they can be content somewhere else. Happy, even. And that the security you once felt in being their entire world was never meant to last.

Two summers ago, Jason moved to a remote cabin in rural Canada to direct his first movie, and I moved to a remote cabin in Bridgehampton with Sid and Lazlo. When I first heard that he was leaving, I assumed I’d simply continue without him. In that sense, parenting is a bit like the Oregon Trail. Jason’s frostbite or broken axle didn’t preclude me from keeping calm and carrying myself to Europe. But I didn’t keep calm. After learning that Europeans don’t believe in summer camp, I panicked.

When I was six years old, I had a birthday party after school. My mother hung a piñata from her condo balcony, and we all took turns beating it until it exploded across the driveway. Chiclets, Mars Bars, and tootsie rolls flew everywhere while a clown performed, and my mom sipped Coors Light in the corner. I sat in the grass, next to the driveway, ripping through a pile of presents as the festivities raged around me.

I wake up in the middle of the night a lot lately- usually in a cold sweat- usually unsure where I am, which body, which lifetime. I find myself walking into walls, forgetting myself in Ubers, and negotiating with dead ends as if in better light they might be doorways. My life stopped making sense recently, or maybe it actually makes more sense. Maybe this was something I’ve always known was coming, not because I wanted it, but because it was always predetermined.

There is a version of maturity that looks a lot like silence- of metabolizing your pain in private and saving your true emotions for your therapist. I wish I knew how to turn away from my wounds instead of picking them apart and bleeding all over the furniture. But I’m always overridden by my need to feel understood. So I bargain with myself, I loop back and forth, weighing which unbearable weight feels heavier: naming the chaos inside me, or suppressing it and praying that it reabsorbs.

Call me old-fashioned, but I only want my sons to marry women with dead mothers. It’s my only shot at staying relevant, of seeming useful, and of winning by comparison. Having boys is a mind fuck. It builds you up, only to tear you apart. I’m not a stay-at-home mom; I have a job, a dog, and twelve to fifteen things I’m considering buying off the Real Real at all times. But none of that seems to matter, because as a mother of sons, the red pill and the blue pill both lead to the same place: OBLIVION.

Two nights ago, I watched this new Bob Lazar documentary. In it, he talks about his employment at a secret military base outside of Area 51, called S4, where he worked on recovered extraterrestrial crafts. He was apparently fired because, like a moron, he told his friends and family what he was doing. I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.

The watch show was already buzzing when I arrived the following morning. Johnson got me a badge that let me skip the line and enter half an hour before opening. I had imagined something closer to a Turkish bazaar: rows of watches to rummage through, dealers shouting, a little fraud, and the constant risk of missing a diamond in the rough. One dealer warned I’d need to look at each case three times to catch everything.

Sorry for the jump in story today on my sub post. In exchange, I offer you this INSANELY detailed list of everything I wore in HONG KONG! Bon Appétit! lace trim cami - under a leather blazer and jeans ribbed lace cami - same but different. color block skirt - I love the pop of red here for a dinner. white trouser with a good leg - these barrel leg trousers with a cream silky top and a white pump.