The fluorescent lights of the lecture hall hummed, a constant, irritating buzz against the quiet rustle of textbooks and the soft tapping of keyboards. Most days, I barely noticed it. Most days, I was focused on taking notes, on absorbing every word the professor said, on proving I deserved to be there. But some days, that hum was just one more layer of annoyance in a thick skin of judgment.
And a good portion of that judgment was reserved for the girl who sat two rows ahead, always to the left. She was a fixture. A perpetually late, perpetually disheveled fixture. Her hair was often a tangled mess, a frantic bed-head that suggested she’d rolled out of something without much care. Her clothes, while clean, always looked rumpled, stretched, or just… worn.
She’d slip in, sometimes five minutes late, sometimes twenty, never with an apology, just a quiet slide into her seat, head down, backpack thudding softly beside her. She never contributed to discussions. Her eyes, whenever they lifted from her notes, looked hollow, shadowed with a fatigue that seemed to be bone-deep. Seriously, how hard is it to get enough sleep? I’d think, bristling. This is college, not a slumber party. I saw her as someone who didn’t care, someone who was squandering an opportunity others would kill for. My own parents had worked tirelessly to give me this chance, and seeing someone so seemingly blasé about it ignited a quiet fury in me.
A woman talking to a doctor | Source: Midjourney
We were nearing the end of the semester, and Professor Davies, a kind but firm woman who always pushed us to think, not just memorize, announced our final project. “This isn’t about research,” she’d said, her voice clear above the sudden murmurs. “This is about empathy. I want you to choose a societal issue – homelessness, mental health, poverty, systemic injustice – and explore it, not from a textbook perspective, but from the perspective of someone living it. Interview someone, volunteer, immerse yourself. Understand the invisible burdens people carry.”
A groan rippled through the room. Another touchy-feely project? I rolled my eyes, internally. But then, a flicker. I caught the girl with the dark eyes, the perpetually tired one, staring intently at the professor. A strange intensity in her gaze. Maybe this is too much for her to handle? I mused, still full of my uncharitable assumptions. Probably just trying to figure out how to do the bare minimum.
I chose to focus on the challenges faced by young adults aging out of the foster care system. It felt profound, important. I interviewed case workers, read heart-wrenching stories, even spent a day at a local community center. The stories were difficult, but I always felt a safe distance, an academic remove. This isn’t my life.
A man in a hospital bed | Source: Freepik
As presentations approached, the girl with the dark eyes seemed even more withdrawn. She was absent more often now, and when she did come, her fatigue was palpable, almost radiating from her. Her clothes seemed even more worn, her hair more unruly. I saw her sipping instant coffee from a chipped mug, her hands trembling slightly. Rough night out, I guess, I judged, sipping my artisan latte. Some people just don’t know how to prioritize.
On presentation day, her name was called. She walked to the front of the class, her shoulders slumped, clutching a single sheet of paper. Her voice, when she started, was barely a whisper. She hadn’t prepared slides, no fancy visuals. She just stood there, looking at the floor.
“I… I chose homelessness,” she began, her voice cracking. A few snickers in the back were quickly silenced by Professor Davies’ stern gaze. “Not… not just generally. My project… it’s about my experience.”
The air in the room thickened. My assumptions, so firmly entrenched, suddenly felt… brittle.
An angry woman in a hospital | Source: Midjourney
She spoke of couch surfing, of trying to study in noisy shelters, of working graveyard shifts at a diner to afford bus fare and food, just so she could make it to class, even late. She talked about the constant fear of being caught, of the shame that felt like a physical weight on her chest. She spoke of her mother’s illness, a chronic condition that had led to the family’s eviction, leaving them with nowhere to go. She wasn’t just researching homelessness; she was living it.
My heart thudded, a sickening rhythm against my ribs. Oh, my God. Every late entrance, every tired sigh, every rumpled shirt, every hollow stare—it all snapped into agonizing focus. It wasn’t apathy. It was exhaustion. It wasn’t disrespect. It was a battle for survival. My artisan latte suddenly tasted like ash. I felt a wave of nausea.
She finished, her voice a fragile thread, tears tracing paths down her smudged cheeks. She didn’t ask for pity, just shared her truth. The room was silent. A profound, heavy silence. Professor Davies simply nodded, a gentle, understanding look on her face. She knew. She knew this whole time.
A sad man in a hospital bed | Source: Freepik
I left class that day feeling hollowed out, gutted. My righteous indignation had crumbled into a pile of ash, replaced by a searing guilt. How could I have been so blind? So judgmental? I wanted to apologize. I wanted to help. I saw her walking towards the bus stop, her backpack looking impossibly heavy. I almost called out to her, but the words stuck in my throat, choked by shame. What could I even say? Sorry I thought you were a lazy loser while you were fighting to keep a roof over your head? The hypocrisy was suffocating.
I never saw her in class again after that. Not the next day, not the next week. Her seat remained empty. I asked Professor Davies about her, but she simply shook her head gently. “She’s facing immense challenges. We’re doing what we can.” What could ‘we’ do? I wondered. I tried to find her, to connect, to offer help, any help. But she seemed to have vanished.
Days turned into weeks. The semester ended. I carried the weight of my past assumptions, a constant ache in my chest. The empathy lesson had landed, hard and true, but too late for me to make amends, too late to offer a kind word when it mattered most. I often thought of her, wondering if she was okay, if she had found stability, if she was safe. I hope so. I truly hope so.
A woman leaving a hospital room | Source: Midjourney
Then, months later, I was scrolling through local news. A small article caught my eye. “Community mourns young woman found deceased.” My breath hitched. The accompanying photo, a grainy, slightly outdated student ID picture, punched the air out of my lungs. It was her. The girl with the dark eyes, the perpetually tired one. The article stated she had been found in an abandoned building downtown. Cause of death was inconclusive, but suspected exposure. It mentioned her mother’s ongoing illness, her struggle to find stable housing.
My vision blurred. A cold dread seeped into my bones. But then, a detail in the article. A small, almost throwaway line in the final paragraph. It mentioned that the building where she was found, a derelict former warehouse, had recently been purchased by a development company. A company that had big plans for luxury apartments. A company that bore the name of my family’s real estate empire.
A man talking on the phone in a hospital bed | Source: Midjourney
The world tilted. My throat closed. The air went thin. MY FAMILY. My father’s company. The same company that had been buying up properties all over the city, gentrifying neighborhoods, pushing out the very people I was supposedly learning to empathize with.
I stared at the screen, tears streaming down my face, hot and furious. ALL THIS TIME. All my judgment, all my guilt, all my newfound empathy, culminating in this unbearable, soul-crushing truth. She was found in a building that was about to be torn down by my family. The invisible burden she carried, the struggle for a roof over her head, had ended in a place my family owned. The same family that paid for my comfortable apartment, my expensive tuition, my artisan lattes.
A serious woman talking on the phone | Source: Pexels
The hum of the lecture hall, the rustle of textbooks, the quiet tapping of keys… it all came back, but now it was a deafening roar. MY ASSUMPTIONS HAD FALLEN APART, YES. But so had my world. And in the wreckage, I saw not just my own blindness, but the horrifying, complicit hand of everything I had ever known. I thought I was learning empathy. I was just learning how deeply I was implicated in the very systems that broke her.
