Ride or Die? Issa and Molly in Insecure Season 4
SPOILER ALERT: There will be spoilers.
You ever have that ride or die friend? That one who you can call at 1 am and know they got you? That person you believe will be with you through everything and that your relationship will never change? Until it does and then you have to figure out how to deal with it. In season 4 of Insecure, we learn that Issa and Molly are in the midst of that change. We saw it happening throughout this series. The question has always been how their changes were going to affect their relationship and this season showed us.
I have a friend I’ve known for 20 years, 11 of which we were roommates. She was there when I was at my worst and it was bad for both of us. I was clinically depressed and untreated, my father was fighting his second cancer, a battle that would last for a decade, I was working a shit job that would intentionally try to degrade and diminish me…I was spiraling. I needed to make some big changes, but I had no idea when or where to start. I just knew that everything was shit and I couldn’t live that way anymore.
There’s a funny thing that happens when you start changing — the people in your life get uncomfortable. They like who and how you are. You are a comfortable sweater; a known habit and they resist that change because it is uncomfortable for them. And messy for them. You fuck up a lot. To understand yourself, you have to look at all the pieces of yourself you’ve hidden, lied about, learned to ignore. It takes years of trial and error, of setback after setback to learn who you really are and to realize that you can be who you are. Then it takes years to trust yourself because the people around you aren’t necessarily with you on that journey. Most aren’t even watching. They just expect you to be the person you’ve always been and, because we are often selfish and self-centered creatures, they are unpleasantly surprised by any growth that doesn’t serve them.
I can’t say that everyone does it, but it’s common. The people in our lives are often touchstones for us, the embodiment of our ideals and feelings rather than human beings trying to figure shit out like we are. We want our touchstones to be stable, predictable, steady — but people do not grow that way. We try, we fail, we learn, we adapt to our environments. We develop goals and we fight for them. Life is change and while our conscious, rational, logical selves want to categorize everything into a stagnant place, we are living people who never stop changing. And as we grow more comfortable with ourselves and learn to trust ourselves more, we are better able to maintain our individuality in our relationships and withstand the judgment we receive for daring to become our fully mutable selves.
Molly likes stable. She wants routine and likes people to be predictable. Molly needs to figure out how to navigate change and decide what is more important — the rules or the people who don’t always follow the rules. Issa is a chaos agent. She will blow up her whole life exploring and understanding how she feels. The evolution of Issa over these seasons of Insecure show a person who tried to walk the straight and narrow and found that it doesn’t fit her. She’s still figuring out what that means in all her relationships, and she is willing to take the hits that come with it. She’s working on figuring out how to be honest with herself and others about what she wants, and she is finding her stride in the rejection of structure in a society that demands it. The two of them are on very different journeys and they need to decide if they care enough about one another to improve their friendship. Communication is just one part of that. Allowing each other the space to change is another.
Molly called it right: they may not be able to be friends at this time in their lives. They are both making large transitions that they are not emotionally intelligent enough to incorporate into their current relationship dynamic. They may still love and care about each other but be unable to be in each other’s lives in a significant way right now. They may move in different directions and fall out of contact. They may reach a point where they can be friends again. This is something they will each need to decide individually and then work together to build. Only time will tell what they choose.
I’m the Issa in my long-term friendship. We are still friendly; we both know that we could call on each other in a clutch, but we aren’t as involved in each other’s lives as we had been in the past. She and I had to take a break from each other and define our own paths and while our relationship changed, it still exists and I got the space I needed to decide who I want to be in life and pursue that.
My friend has developed her own circle and network and while we interact with each other’s networks casually, our networks are separate. Sometimes it feels fluffy, but maybe that is what we need in order to stay in each other’s lives. We’ve hurt each other and we still haven’t reached that place where we can talk fully about the wounds we’ve caused and how to heal from them. I keep hoping to change that, but until it does, we are acquaintances who know a hell of a lot about one another. It’s not the same, and while it was never meant to be, I still miss it.
This is the area where Issa is fucking up: accountability and communication. Issa wants to go on like nothing happened, but something did happen and she’s talking about it with everyone except Molly. Issa knows that she only reaches out to Molly when she needs her. Like a lot of people, Issa wants their friendship to be safe and effortless. When we’re young, our relationships feel effortless because they are mainly driven by convenience and proximity. As we get older, that convenience and proximity changes. Seeing our friends becomes more effort. Suddenly our relationships feel like work…and they are. Maintaining our friendships requires that we opt-in more as our lives and needs change over time, something it takes time to realize. Right now, Issa isn’t interested in opting-in to that emotional vulnerability in their friendship and it could be that with all the change going on in her life, maybe she thought this relationship would stay easy…until it didn’t. Molly, on the other hand, is invested in being right and Andrew was supposed to be her proof that she’s not the problem in her relationships…until he wasn’t.
The thing is, unless something egregious happens, there is no right or wrong in many relationships. Sometimes it’s just communicating your priorities. Sometimes it’s accepting that someone else’s priorities are different. And sometimes it’s just communicating. All of these things require time and a willingness to meet someone where they’re at, instead of insisting on them coming to you. And sometimes you realize that those different priorities outweigh the benefits of the relationship. There can be a peace in letting relationships die. There can be a peace in fighting for them to live. I’ve held on to some relationships for a lot longer than I should, and while I mourned the loss, their death set me free.
I don’t know what’s in store for Issa and Molly. Their issues are not insurmountable, but they will require honesty, reflection, effort, and collaboration from both of them to figure out if this is something meant to be buried or to rise from the ashes. Seeing them come together at the end feels hopeful. It also feels real. What I liked most about this season is that it’s not a definitive case of one person wronging another. It’s just two people growing apart as they figure their shit out…and we got to come along on the ride.
If you appreciate or learned from this essay, please feel free to compensate me by contributing to my Paypal or CashApp. You can contribute any amount you want at any time:
Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TaLynnKel
Cash App: $TalynnKel
OR
Originally published at https://talynnkel.com on June 14, 2020.
