“My son is my best friend.”

La La Anthony is shedding tears and sharing her real and raw feelings now that her only son, Kiyan Anthony, has moved away to college. Any parent of a child who’s left the nest to start their next chapter as a college student can relate to the feelings La La has opened up about during a recent podcast episode with Angie Martinez.

Every parent who sends a child off to college knows that a whole array of feelings rush in. Pride, happiness, excitement for your child’s new chapter, but then after they move onto campus, the sadness, emptiness, and fear set in. La La is no different.

Her only son, Kiyan, who she shares with ex-husband, former NBA star Carmelo Anthony, is attending Syracuse University and moved onto campus about a month ago. It appears it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride for La La, like any other college parent can relate to, and she recently opened up and shared how the transition has been for her during her appearance on Angie Martinez “IRL” podcast.

La La opened up during her chat with Martinez to share how she’s in a “very interesting season” of her life.

“Kiyan has officially left for college and I keep telling people that it’s just something that I don’t think I heard enough people talk about, or maybe I just wasn’t prepared for it,” La La said. “You hear conversations about everything people go through in life. For some reason, I wasn’t privy to the conversation about when your kid leaves for college, when your only child leaves for college, and that void and emptiness and just like literally one day he’s there and then then he’s just not.”

Kiyan has been off at college for about a month now, and La La said that when he left, “the energy in the house kind of just left,” because her house was the place where all his friends would be and there would be music playing, and “fun all the time.”

“He just left and it just got quiet,” she said. “And that’s been really, really hard for me.”

As many other parents can relate, the transition since Kiyan left has been a difficult one for La La.

“I’m not embarrassed to say it, I’m leaning into it so I can understand what that feeling is and try to like move past it and get to whatever the other side is, but right now I’m so deep in that feeling,” she said. “And it’s been hard.”

When Martinez asked if La La didn’t expect this to feel this way, La La revealed that she wasn’t sure what to expect. Thinking of the day Kiyan would move off to college always seemed so far away, even when it got closer, for La La. She said she was “just savoring all that time” and didn’t realize the “impact” it would have.

La La shared a story of her transition into her new empty nest when she called her son in the middle of the night.

“One time, it was one night like 2 o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep and I called him,” she said. “And I just started crying. ‘I need you to come home.’ He’s like, ‘Mom, are you okay?'”

She continued explaining how she told him to come home, and he said he couldn’t, and that it only happened once and she “pulled it together.”

La La fought back tears while telling her story. She even said she’s “not an emotional person” but this has been “so, so hard.”

When The Blast sat down with La La a few years back, we briefly discussed Kiyan thinking about colleges. A year after that conversation, we sat down again and discussed that he had chosen a college and that the big changes ahead had La La in her feels.

“All the feels. It’s like, in one sense, I’m so proud of him, and I love talking about it. In the other sense, it’s just a reminder that he’s leaving the house soon,” she said.

“Yesterday he was showing me how he wanted to decorate his dorm, like, ‘Mom, I want to get this couch, and this and this and this.’ And I’m like we’re really having this conversation? I was like, wow, this is happening. I’m so excited, and you know, there’s sadness there, too just because I’m gonna miss him, but excited to see him on this next journey and phase of life.”

And while La La’s resume is a mile long with exciting projects, her favorite title has and always will be “Kiyan Anthony’s mom.”

“It’s Kiyan Anthony’s mom,” the proud mom laughed. “And by the way, I will take that title over anything any day of the year.”