CHAPTER 2: BECOMING USEFUL
I didn’t decide to become useful.
I became useful because it worked.
It kept things calm.
It kept people from asking too many questions.
It gave me something to stand on when everything else felt like it could shift.
There’s a difference between being capable and becoming identified by your capability.
I crossed that line early.
I learned how to:
show up
say the right thing
do what was expected
manage situations
help other people regulate
Even when I didn’t know how to regulate myself yet.
Especially then.
School made sense to me.
There were rules.
There were right answers.
There was structure.
If you did the work, you got the result.
It didn’t ask me how I felt.
It didn’t ask me to explain anything.
It just rewarded output.
So I gave it that.
And I got good at it.
There’s something no one really talks about with high-achieving kids.
Sometimes it’s not confidence.
Sometimes it’s survival dressed up as discipline.
You don’t slow down long enough to ask:
Why do I need to do this well?
You just keep doing it.
Because somewhere along the way, you learned that:
being “good” keeps things steady.
College wasn’t one straight path.
It looked like one from the outside.
But internally, it felt more like shifting.
Trying to land somewhere that felt right.
I started one direction.
Then another.
Then another.
Nursing.
Then Family and Consumer Sciences.
Then general studies.
Then later, rehabilitation counseling.
It might look scattered.
But it wasn’t random.
Every direction still pointed toward:
people
helping
support
structure
I just didn’t know yet where I fit inside of it.
There were cracks even then.
I struggled with writing at times.
Got behind.
Dropped classes.
Picked them back up.
There were moments that felt heavier than they should have.
Moments where something in me just… stalled.
Like my brain had too many tabs open and couldn’t close any of them.
But I still kept going.
That’s the part people saw.
I worked while I went to school.
Customer service.
Cashier.
Whatever was needed.
There’s something humbling about those jobs.
You learn quickly:
how people treat you
how much patience you have
how to keep your tone even when someone else doesn’t
It teaches you control.
Not emotional resolution.
Control.
Eventually, I landed in rehabilitation counseling.
That felt closer.
More aligned.
It made sense that I would help people rebuild their lives.
It felt… familiar.
Even if I didn’t say that out loud.
Graduate school, for a while, felt like proof.
Like maybe everything had added up to something real.
I did well.
Honor societies.
Independent studies.
Presentations.
Passing major exams on the first try.
COMPS.
CRC.
NCE.
All of it.
On paper, I was exactly who I was supposed to be.
Capable.
Educated.
Qualified.
But here’s the part that doesn’t show up next to those accomplishments:
I was tired.
Not physically.
Something deeper than that.
A kind of tired that doesn’t go away with sleep.
Because it’s not about rest.
It’s about holding too many things internally for too long without fully processing them.
I moved into helping roles professionally.
Addiction work.
Mental health.
Vocational rehabilitation.
Case management.
I sat across from people who were:
struggling
hurting
rebuilding
trying to make sense of their lives
And I understood them.
Not from a textbook.
From somewhere else.
There’s a certain kind of connection that happens when you’ve lived close to emotional instability yourself.
You can hear what people don’t say.
You can feel shifts in tone.
You can sit in silence without rushing it.
That made me good at what I did.
Really good, in some ways.
But there’s also a cost.
When you’re the one people come to for stability,
you don’t always notice when you’re running low yourself.
Or maybe you notice—
but you don’t stop.
Because stopping would mean:
feeling everything you’ve been holding.
So I kept going.
Different jobs.
Different agencies.
Different roles.
Some ended because of contracts.
Some because of fit.
Some because I left.
Some because I needed to leave.
Some because I was offered something better.
Some because I couldn’t keep doing it the same way anymore.
From the outside, it might look inconsistent.
From the inside, it felt like:
trying to find a place I could stand without losing myself.
There were moments where things started to crack more noticeably.
Stress building.
Emotional weight getting heavier.
Things I hadn’t fully processed catching up in quiet ways.
And then less quiet ways.
There’s a version of burnout people talk about.
And then there’s another version they don’t.
The kind where:
it’s not just your job that’s exhausting you—
it’s your entire way of being.
I didn’t have language for that yet.
I just knew something felt off.
And of course… no bible or single book could give me all the answers I truly needed, but more on that as we continue…
…to be continued….
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