Mom Films Herself Crying in the Bathroom Asking When She Gets a Break, Then Explains She Has Been Home With Her Daughter Around the Clock for Two Years Without Family Help

“When do I get a break?” @manitsjaz puts the question to her phone camera from her bathroom, a white shower curtain with black spots hanging behind her, and then repeats it several times. Within seconds she is crying, wiping her face with her hand and turning away from the lens before coming back to it with tears on her cheeks.

The one minute TikTok, posted October 5, has a single line of text fixed across the middle of the screen: “I want to LIVE this life with her, not just live in it.” In the caption she writes about her daughter, who she says was born two years ago.

She says very little on camera. Her one full sentence of explanation is “I just wanted to wake up this morning and go to the bathroom by myself.” Part of what she says includes profanity, and for most of the remaining time she simply cries. The detail is in the caption, which she opens by calling the clip a “raw moment of being a full time sahm.”

There she lists what she expected motherhood to look like. “I thought I’d have my nana, my mom, and in general my family here to support me while learning to be a mom, but I don’t,” she writes. She also pictured “friends to hangout with all the time” and “mommy and mini adventures.”

Paid help is not filling the gap, by her own choice. “We aren’t the type of parents to just let anyone watch or see our girl, so a babysitter is VERY limited/ slim to none,” she writes, adding that if being called over protective “means my daughter is safe, then so be it.” She is direct about what that costs her: “it’s feels like I’m alone in motherhood, life, and within myself.”

Her husband, she writes, “works full time to provide for our family & is gone a lot. I miss him, but I understand his sacrifice.” What she wants during the day is “another adult” for conversations “that don’t involve ‘icky sticky bubblegum.'” Most of her mom friends “have jobs, live too far, or plans just seem to not work out,” which she notes “is in no one’s control.”

The line that explains the bathroom video comes near the end: “I’m in my house 24/7 and have been since my daughter was born 2 years ago.” She writes that she feels her life and her daughter’s are “being wasted by being in this house all the time.” One change is on the way: “We’re getting a second car soon, so hopefully it will help,” she writes, “but sometimes a mommy just wants 5 minutes alone, and that’s ok to want.” She closes by saying she is “taking it day by day” and wants “to let other sahm’s know they’re not alone.”