How come cells use ATP energy to carry out life processes and not energy from glucose directly?

The chemical reactions of metabolism are organized into metabolic pathways, in which one chemical is transformed through a series of steps into another chemical, by a sequence of enzymes. Enzymes are crucial to metabolism because they allow organisms to drive desirable reactions that require energy and will not occur by themselves, by coupling them to spontaneous reactions that release energy. As enzymes act as catalysts they allow these reactions to proceed quickly and efficiently. Enzymes also allow the regulation of metabolic pathways in response to changes in the cell's environment or signals from other cells.
These metabolic pathways are the same from e-coli to elephants.
Carbohydrate catabolism is the breakdown of carbohydrates into smaller units. Carbohydrates are usually taken into cells once they have been digested into monosaccharides. Once inside, the major route of breakdown is glycolysis, where sugars such as glucose and fructose are converted into pyruvate and some ATP is generated. Pyruvate is an intermediate in several metabolic pathways, but the majority is converted to acetyl-CoA and fed into the citric acid cycle. Although some more ATP is generated in the citric acid cycle, the most important product is NADH, which is made from NAD+ as the acetyl-CoA is oxidized.
Go to utube with a search "citric acid cycle" to increase your understanding.
The visual really helps me a lot.
Maybe it will help you too.
Best of luck either way, and happy new year.

ATP isn't the middle man--glucose is the middle man!

ATP is the universal energy currency.  It is an unstable molecule, which is good and bad: it is great for transferring energy back and forth, but bad for storage.

Your question should be, how come organisms use glucose to store and consume energy instead of just keeping ATP hanging around?  Glucose, unlike ATP, is extremely stable.  It can actually stay in circulation without spontaneously breaking down.