Last class, during break, Lisa came and stood right next to me. She didn't say anything, she just stood there, smiling a little too widely. It made me so damn sad. Of course I introduced myself and asked her how she was, asked her a few questions about her most recent submission-- stuff like that.

For the rest of the break, she talked my ear off about her blind mother, her alcoholic brother (he committed suicide 5 years ago) and her father's untimely death when she was just a child.

I felt like such an asshole. I'd been rather inwardly smug about Lisa for the last few weeks, rejoicing in the fact that I'm not hugely overweight, that I don't have a lisp, that aside from a zit or two now and then, my skin is good. I hated myself at that moment. I think that for the most part I'm a nice person. Seriously. But sometimes I'm really a shallow bitch.