The Cusp Of Adulthood With A Broken Map

My earliest memory of thinking about what I wanted to be when I grow-up was around age 5 or 6. Mom was working at an animal shelter/hospital and I remember seeing her help animals with their boo boos just like she had helped me when I got my own boo boos. I remember thinking that's what I want to do when I grow-up. Throughout the years I had visions of being a Ríkislögreglan, (Iceland's version of a US Marshall or National Police) doctor, teacher, and more recently a writer, therapist, psychiatrist, and forensic psychologist.

Looking back at these various career aspirations I have noticed a fairly consistent theme; they are valuable to the community, take a lot of dedication, and each of them require that I have my heads on straight  A police-person has to be able to control their emotions so that they can make decisions based on legality as oppose to emotion. A teacher must be able to teach by example and in a clear way so that a child could understand, and be able to leave their personal problems at home. Writing is sort of an exception to this in that emotions will actually help, but unless I was to become well-known author like Stephen King or Dean Koontz it would be a real challenge to make a living. A therapist would benefit from being able to empathize with their clients but yet again a therapist must be able to turn off the emotions in order to let logic and reasoning guide the therapy sessions. A psychiatrist is pretty much a medical doctor and a therapist rolled into one and it requires an even more intense training and emotional control on the part of the psychiatrist. A forensic psychologist requires the same discipline and investigatorial skills as a police-person along with the ability to delve into the thought processes of the criminal mind. The spelunking into the pathology of the often violent and sadistic criminal mind most certainly requires a disconnect of work and personal life.

If I were to put these careers in order of preference, 1 being most preferred and 7 being least preferred; the order would be.

Before my assault:

1 - Doctor
2 - Teacher
3 - Writer
4 - Psychiatrist
5 - Police
6 - Forensic Psychologist
7 - Therapist (physical health)

After my assault (now):

1 - Therapist (emotional health)
2 - Forensic Psychologist
3 - Psychiatrist
4 - Teacher
5 - Writer
6 - Doctor
7 - Police

The weird thing is although my assault hasn't changed my career aspirations, it has re-prioritized them. Here's the problem. How do I get from the emotional wreck that I am now, to someone who is in control over her emotions so that I can reasonably pursue one of these careers? I still have roughly 32 months before I will start college. College life alone will open me up to a huge amount of pier pressure stresses and emotional triggers involving relationships on top of academic pressures and stresses. I also have to heal enough to know that I will be able to handle these jobs before I even go to college or I run the risk of filling my head with 4 or more years of useless information that I will never be able to use in a career. It's like I am standing on the cusp of adulthood with a broken map and not knowing which way to go or how to get their; and even if I do find my way there I don't know how I would be able to handle it all.

It was so clear before and the map in my head was simple. I saw a clear path with very trivial roadblocks, but now this path is covered in broken shards of glass that's itching to carve me into pieces as I attempt to traverse it. How do I get to a point in my healing in a 32 month period of time where I can then make a rational career choice about not what I WANT to do, but what I can do? "CAN" and "WANT" are often vastly different things and I'm so confused about how to bring them together into a coherent entity. I hate this feeling of unsurety that makes me feel like I am walking around blindfolded on stilts in the middle of a minefield. I know it’s just a matter of time before I fall face first on a Claymore.