I lied to my mom

Okay, so I need to get this off my chest. It's been eating me up for like, years. It's about my mom. My mom, who is probably the best person I know. Seriously. She worked her butt off to give me and my sister everything we needed, even when my dad wasn't around much. She always put us first. And I... I lied to her. Big time.

It was when I was in college. Freshman year. I was supposed to be studying, right? Getting good grades, making her proud. But I was... not doing that. I was partying. A lot. I mean, a LOT. Drinking, staying out late, the whole shebang. And, yeah, I was failing a class. Math. I always sucked at math.

She'd call, like, every week, asking how things were going. And I'd just lie. 'Oh, everything's great, Mom! Classes are going well. I'm making friends.' Total BS. I even lied about my grades when she asked directly. I remember her saying how proud she was of me for keeping my grades up, and I just... I just let her believe it. I felt like such a piece of crap.

The thing is, I knew she was struggling. Money was tight. She was working extra shifts. And here I was, wasting her money on beer and textbooks I wasn't even opening. The guilt was awful, but I was too ashamed to tell her the truth. I didn't want to disappoint her.

So I kept lying. All semester. And then, the final grades came out. I failed math. Horribly. And I still didn't tell her. I just… avoided the subject. I told her I was going to take summer classes to catch up, which was partly true, but I left out the failing part.

The next semester, I actually did better. I buckled down, got a tutor, and passed my classes. But that lie was still hanging over me. It was like a dark cloud. I knew I had to tell her eventually, but I kept putting it off. What would she think of me? Would she be mad? Disappointed? Would she still love me?

It's been… like six years now. Six years of this secret. I'm graduated, I have a good job, I'm doing well. She's proud of me. But it's all built on this lie. And it’s not fair to her. She deserves the truth. She deserves to know that her perfect daughter wasn't so perfect after all. She deserves to know that I know that what I did was a shit thing to do. I don’t know what to do, if I tell her now, it feels like I'm making *her* feel bad just to unburden *myself*. But… I can’t keep carrying this around. I’m just tired. I’m so tired of lying. I’m gonna tell her soon, I think. I just… I hope she can forgive me.