Gaya, 20
My name is Gaya. I finished my A/Levels at a school three hours outside Colombo. My marks were good.
And then, for almost a year, nothing happened.
There was nobody to ask.
Not one person. My parents had done everything they could and this world was not one they knew. My teachers had finished their part when the exam finished.
My friends were as lost as I was. So after a while, we stopped talking about it.
I had the results. I had no idea what you were supposed to do with them.
And nowhere to go.
There was no office I could walk into. Nobody I could sit across from and say: this is what I think I am good at, tell me what to do next.
The days got very quiet. Months went past like that.
When you have nowhere to be, you slowly stop believing you are supposed to be anywhere.
I was not lazy.
I was alone.
Then Nethmi came home.
We sat next to each other in Grade 10. Same village. Same school. Same everything.
She was not louder than before. She was settled. She looked at people while she spoke to them. She finished her sentences.
I kept staring at her, trying to work out what had changed.
So I asked her.
She said two words. Smart Peers.
Ten people. Six sessions. Three months. No fee.
And then she said the sentence that made me fill in the form:
“Everybody in that room was exactly where you are right now.”
I registered.
Then I was terrified.
For two weeks I looked for a reason to cancel.
I had already built the room in my head: Colombo students with perfect English, all of them ahead of me, and me in the corner, the slowest person there, being politely tolerated.
On the morning itself, I almost didn’t go.
I walked in late, on purpose, so I could sit at the back.
There was no back.
Ten chairs in a circle. That was the whole room.
And then I looked at their faces, and here is the thing nobody had told me:
They were all wearing my face.
Same age. Same results with nowhere to put them. Same silence at home. Same fear that everyone else had somehow been given a map.
Nobody ahead of me. Nobody amused by me.
I sat down, and for the first time in a year,
I was not behind.
That was the first hour.
Everything that came after was easier than that hour, because after that I was not doing it by myself.
The first time I spoke for ninety seconds in English, standing up, my voice shook the whole way through. Nobody corrected me. One of them told me the one thing I had done well.
I learned how to walk into a room. Where to put my shoulders. How to greet someone. Nothing that cost money. Only things I had never been shown.
I wrote one page in my own handwriting. Three months, one year, and a direction after that. Someone my own age asked me the only useful question: what is the first actual step?
Between the sessions there were two weeks and nine people who noticed whether I had tried. That, more than anything in the room, is what kept me going.
Two minutes. My own plan.
In my own voice.
Same girl. Same marks. The same results slip still in a drawer at home.
Nothing about what I could do had changed. Everything about what I could reach had.
Now I am the one
who tells someone.
Nethmi did not give me confidence. She gave me an address.
That is all this is. Ten people who find out they were never the only one, and then go and tell the next ten.