Telling your parents the truth now is lighter than carrying the lie through every dinner.

Keeping a lie going is the expensive part, not telling it. Every conversation afterward contains a place you cannot go, so you get quieter around the people you live with, and they notice the distance without knowing the reason for it. What began as one unsaid thing slowly becomes the shape of the whole relationship.

If something is waiting, pick a calm moment rather than a confrontation. Say you have something to tell them and that you would rather they heard it from you. It will be a hard hour, and it is shorter than the alternative.