Plans, Plans, and More Plans 

I have a confession to make.  I am a compulsive planner.  If you were to test me on a Myers-Briggs profile, you would find me to be an INTJ, what they sometimes call a "mastermind" profile.  These are the people who demand structure.  Indeed, for many of us INTJs, structure is what gives meaning to things -- purpose to the universe.  It's hard for us to let things just "be", to just jump into a venture with open arms and hands and minds and just... let it happen.

I can't.  I have to know the results.  I have to anticipate every contingency, plot every scenario, plan every step in the winding road life takes me.  That is my curse.

These last two days I have ruminated over every particular of how to tell my wife of my decision to leave.  What time of day?  Where should I tell her?  What should I say... oh GOD, what DO I say?  What do I do immediately after telling her?  Will I have to leave?  Will my kids go with me?  They SAID they would go with me, but how can I be sure?  Where will I move to?  How long should I lease?  How can I pay for all this?

Knowing L.'s propensity for anger and verbal abuse, I know it will open a gaping wound in her soul.  For as much as she can spill hatred towards me, she is capable of affection and love.  Due to L's mother's recent hospital visit, she has been distracted and generally docile, too tired for too much strife and controlling behavior as she helps sit by her side most of the day.  She will experience a certain level of shock, though it will not be total.  She had left herself several months before.  She has wanted me out many times before, only to take me back to say "she can't live without me."

I am like the chessmaster wanting to know not just the opponents' next move, but the 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 5th.  I guess at them until my head begins to spin.  I was never too good at chess.  I play too much by instinct, what I feel the right move should be based on what sits before me.  Weird how that seems to run counter to my instinct to plan everything else.

There is a lesson in this I think.  I can only plan for so much of what lies ahead.  I can think of only a few of the moves on the board.  The rest is... a leap of faith.  And for me, that is the hardest thing of all to do.  Faith no longer comes naturally to me; perhaps it never has.  I fear what I cannot plan, what I cannot know.  Knowing is everything -- if I know what is to come, I can prepare myself.  Not knowing is like teetering on a cliff, terrified that I am ready to fall and yet not quite falling, still trying to right myself and keep from dying from the fall to the rocks far below.  I would feel safer if someone were there to grab me -- someone I could trust to rescue me from the fall.  But there is only me.  I alone must keep myself from falling into the abyss.  No schematic or blueprint will cushion the fall or support my weight.  I must trust my own balance, my own instinct to save myself as the journey reaches its climax.