I thought merging into someone was closeness. It isn't really. You just get smaller. Rebuilding from nothing in your mid thirties is its own specific kind of embarrassing and hard.
I did start saying no more after that. Not in some big obvious way, not a whole new me, just. I started actually finishing the sentence in my head before I agreed to things. Imagining what it would mean for my week, whether I could afford it.
My next review was better. I felt less useful in the way I'd felt useful before and that took some getting used to, that was genuinely strange. There's something about being needed all the time that gets into you, settles in somewhere. I missed it a bit. Still do, sometimes, when things go quiet and nobody comes to my desk. I don't know what that says about me. I've thought about it.
I still have the notebook. Blue cover, spiral bound. I found it in a box when I moved flats two years later. I sat on the floor of my new hallway with boxes everywhere and flipped through it. Pages and pages of other people's problems I'd sorted out, other people's meetings, other people's spreadsheets. And then near the back this long run of blank pages. Just blank. Those were supposed to be mine.