This "Functional Hot Mess" Mom Isn't Just Every Parent — She's All of Us

I didn't expect when I woke up this morning that I'd share a deep emotional connection with a total stranger on the internet within 10 minutes of leaving my bed, but thanks to Nicole Waters, who live streamed herself hiding from her fellow suburban moms at the school bus stop, I feel like I've made a new best friend. Not only that, but Nicole may have just coined a term that applies to pretty much every person I know, myself extremely included: "functional hot mess."

In the hilarious video, Nicole is seen keeping it "all the way real" in her sleep bonnet and "Oprah wasn't built in a day" shirt that she wore yesterday — don't worry, she sniffed it and it's "still good" — staring at the other moms through her screen door. Nicole and her family are new to the neighborhood, and she admits that she's also new to this whole suburban mom thing. Because her 6-year-old daughter just started kindergarten, Nicole is adjusting to the fact that the bus doesn't pick up her kid right at the mailbox, but down the street, where all of the "bus moms" convene (particularly her across-the-street-neighbor, who may or may not have judged Nicole for giving her child the chore of picking weeds outside).

"I don't know if any of you guys are like me," Nicole says in her live video. "I like people and I'm extroverted. I'm really just a lover of people . . . but I also don't like people."

(Full disclosure: I'm raising both of my hands.)

The Maryland mom continues, sharing how difficult it can be to feel inferior to other moms, like you don't quite have your sh*t together in the way everyone else does — heck, even Nicole's nanny, who took her daughter down to the bus stop, asked Nicole if she had a blazer she could borrow to look more like she had her own life together.

"It stresses me out," she says of the bus stop scenario — the high-pitched chatting, the smiling, the comparisons, the unspoken judgments. "I have anxiety. Usually around like 8:30 I start getting heart palpitations . . . Every day I'm like, 'Am I going to make it?' Everything is touch and go . . . I can't even."

Although we'll admit that even Nicole is guilty of being judgmental toward the other moms — we all need to make more of an effort to not judge each other — you've got to admit, this 12-minute video is the epitome of relatable, and we are here for it.