Operating Instructions
What This Is:
An honest explanation of how I work. Not an excuse. Not a demand. Just the manual I wish someone had handed out years ago.
I’m an appliance that writes its own instruction manual—one that no one reads, no matter how many times I hand it out.
But I’m handing it out anyway.
Performing Normal
You know how you act a little different at a job interview than you do at home? More polite, more careful, more aware of how you’re coming across?
Now imagine doing that all the time. Every conversation. Every interaction. Every moment in public.
That’s what I do. I watch how other people act—how they smile, when they nod, what they say when—and I copy it. Not because I’m fake. Because if I act like me, people get uncomfortable. They don’t know why. They just pull back.
So I learned to perform “normal.” And I got good at it. Good enough that people don’t see the effort it takes.
But it costs energy. A lot of it. And when I run out, the performance stops. The “real me” comes out—flat, direct, maybe too honest, maybe too quiet.
And people think something’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong. I just ran out of fuel to keep pretending.
The Release Valve
You ever bounce your leg when you’re anxious? Tap a pen in a meeting? Crack your knuckles while you’re thinking?
That’s the same mechanism. Your body moving to release what’s building up inside.
I bounce my right leg. Have for years. Around a table with others, it looked like a nervous habit. People assumed restless energy, maybe too much coffee. They didn’t know it was the only thing keeping me regulated enough to sit there and function.
That’s the adaptation. Find a release valve that doesn’t draw attention. Hide the ones that do.
It’s not weird. It’s not a cry for help. It’s maintenance. The system regulating itself so it doesn’t overload.
The Volume Knob
Your brain has a volume knob. It filters out what doesn’t matter—the refrigerator hum, the flicker of lights, the conversation three tables over. You don’t even notice it’s doing it.
Mine doesn’t filter as well.
But it’s not just volume. It’s context.
In a chow hall—familiar, safe, known—I can tune things out. The noise is background. My system isn’t working overtime.
But in a place I don’t know? Surrounded by strangers, doors on all sides, no idea who’s where or what’s coming? I’m already running threat assessment. Every entrance. Every movement. Every person I don’t recognize.
And I look calm. Because that’s what I do.
But my system is already at capacity. And then a fork scrapes a plate. A dish hits the ground. A chair screeches.
You hear a noise. I feel it. Like you feel nails on a chalkboard—that full-body cringe, that spike through your nerves.
That’s why I go quiet. Why I need to leave. Why I seem irritated out of nowhere.
There’s a reason. It’s just not one you can hear—or feel.
Trusting the Landing
I circle back. I rephrase. I come at the same point from different angles.
It’s not because I think you’re stupid. It’s because I can’t tell if you really got it.
I know when someone’s only scratched the surface. I can feel it. And I know there’s more underneath—more that matters, more that changes how you’d respond if you actually understood.
When you say “I get it” but I can tell you don’t, I can’t let it go. I’ll try again. And again. And that’s exhausting for both of us.
What helps: tell me in your own words. Not parroting—translating. “So what you’re saying is…” and then your version.
If you can reflect it back accurately, I can let it go. That’s the signal I need.
And if you can’t—if it comes back wrong—that’s okay. Just tell me what’s not clicking. That’s not failure. That’s information.
I know this makes me exhausting. I know most people don’t want to work that hard just to have a conversation.
But here’s the other side:
When I’m in your corner, I’m in your corner. I won’t let you bullshit yourself. I won’t nod along when you’re making a mistake. I’ll tell you what I see—even when you don’t want to hear it.
That’s the trade. Exhausting and honest. Relentless and loyal.
A lot of people don’t want that. I get it.
But the ones who do? They get an ally who will never let them down by letting them stay comfortable in a lie.
The Weight of Control
When I get upset over something small, you might wonder how I ever made it through 30 years of military service. How I handled combat. How I functioned in crisis.
Here’s what you’re actually seeing:
The calm I carry isn’t the absence of feeling. It’s containment. I’ve held back things that would break most people—rage, grief, the urge to do violence when violence was deserved.
I held it then. I hold it now. But holding has a cost.
Sometimes it leaks. And it leaks in the small moments—the miscommunication, the feeling unheard, the thing that “shouldn’t” matter but does.
That’s not weakness. That’s the pressure finding a release valve.
When you see me struggle with something small, you’re seeing the weight of everything I’m not letting out. The control I’m still maintaining, even when it doesn’t look like it.
I am not weak. I am a man who could cause harm and chooses not to. Every day. Every moment.
What you’re living with isn’t a fragile man. It’s a dangerous one who has chosen gentleness—and sometimes the seams show.
Meltdown vs. Shutdown vs. The Exit
Most people see “losing it” as one thing. It’s not. There are three different responses, and they look different, feel different, and need different responses from the people around me.
Meltdown:
Too much input. Too much pressure. The system overloads and it has to go somewhere.
It looks like anger. Raised voice. Sharp words. Maybe tears. Maybe pacing, slamming something, needing to move.
It’s not a tantrum. I’m not choosing this. It’s the pressure finding the only exit it can.
I’m still in there. But I’m not in control of the release. It’s happening to me, not by me.
What helps:
- Don’t match my energy. Stay calm. Not cold—calm.
- Don’t tell me to calm down. I know. I can’t yet.
- Give me space if I need to move. Don’t corner me.
- Short sentences. Simple words. I can’t process much.
- Wait. It will pass. Then we can talk.
What doesn’t help:
- “You’re overreacting.” (I’m not reacting. I’m overflowing.)
- “Why are you so upset about this?” (I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out after.)
- Walking away in frustration. (Feels like abandonment when I’m already drowning.)
- Trying to fix it in the moment. (There’s nothing to fix yet. Just let it pass.)
Shutdown:
Same cause—too much input, too much pressure. But instead of exploding out, I collapse in.
I go quiet. Still. I might stare at nothing. I might not be able to talk, or only in single words. It looks like I’m ignoring you. I’m not. I’m just not there.
The system didn’t overflow—it crashed. Blue screen. Reboot required.
What helps:
- Don’t demand a response. I might not be able to give one.
- Quiet presence. You don’t have to leave. Just don’t need anything from me.
- A hand on my shoulder, if I’m okay with touch in that moment. Ask first, or know from experience.
- Time. That’s mostly what I need. Time to come back online.
- Water. Something simple. A small act of care without expectation.
What doesn’t help:
- “Talk to me.” (I can’t. That’s the point.)
- “What’s wrong?” over and over. (I don’t know, and the question adds pressure.)
- Assuming I’m mad at you. (I’m not anywhere right now. It’s not about you.)
- Trying to pull me back before I’m ready. (It takes as long as it takes.)
The Exit:
Sometimes I leave.
I get in my car. Music on. Everything else off. I drive.
It looks like I’m running away. Like I’m shutting you out. Like I don’t care enough to stay and work through it.
That’s not what’s happening.
I’m not cutting you off. I’m cutting me off—before I say something I can’t take back. Before the pressure finds a release that hurts us both.
I want to come back. I want to talk it out. I will.
But in that moment, I’m embarrassed. Frustrated that I’m not being heard, not being understood. And I know if I stay, it won’t get better. Not yet.
The exit isn’t abandonment. It’s a circuit breaker.
What helps:
- Let me go. Don’t chase. Don’t demand I stay.
- A simple “I’ll be here when you get back” means more than you know.
- Don’t punish me for leaving when I return. I left so we could repair later.
What doesn’t help:
- “If you leave, don’t bother coming back.” (That turns safety into threat.)
- Following me, demanding I talk now. (The exit exists because now doesn’t work.)
- Treating the exit as proof I don’t care. (It’s proof I care enough not to make it worse.)
The Return:
When I come back, I’m ready. Or closer to ready.
Give me a minute to land. Then we can talk.
The exit isn’t the end of the conversation. It’s a pause so the conversation can actually happen.
The Difference:
Meltdown is the pot boiling over. Shutdown is the breaker flipping. The Exit is me pulling the plug before the surge.
One makes noise. One goes silent. One leaves. All three are the system protecting itself from overload. None of them are a choice.
The Ask:
If you’re with me when one of these happens, you don’t have to fix it. You can’t.
Just don’t make it worse. Stay close without pressing. Wait without demanding.
I’ll come back. I always do.
And when I do, I’ll need a minute before we talk about what happened. Give me that, and we can get through it together.
Special Interests
Think about something you’ve poured yourself into.
That car in the garage you’ve spent months restoring. The meal you cooked all day—tasting, adjusting, perfecting. The report you stayed late to finish because you wanted it right. The garden you’ve been nurturing since spring.
Now imagine you share it with me. You’re proud. You’re excited. You want me to see what you built.
And I roll my eyes.
I give you a polite nod while I check my phone. I change the subject. I say “that’s cool” in a voice that tells you I don’t think it’s cool at all.
How would that feel?
That’s how it feels when you do it to me.
The difference is: the thing I’m excited about might not look like a car or a meal or a report. It might be a pattern I noticed in history. A connection between two systems that shouldn’t relate but do. A theory about something you’ve never thought about.
It doesn’t look like your kind of work. So it’s easy to dismiss.
But it is my work. It’s where my mind goes when it’s doing what it does best.
And when you roll your eyes at it, you’re rolling your eyes at me.
What It Looks Like:
When something grabs my brain, it grabs it. I don’t choose it. It chooses me.
I will learn everything about it. Read everything. Watch everything. Think about it when I’m doing other things. Connect it to twelve other topics that don’t seem related until I explain why they are.
And I will talk about it.
To anyone. In detail. More detail than you wanted. More than you asked for. I’ll see your eyes glaze over and I’ll still keep going—because to me, this is the most fascinating thing in the world right now, and I can’t understand why you’re not as excited as I am.
Then I’ll notice. The eye roll. The polite nod that means you stopped listening five minutes ago. The friend who suddenly has somewhere else to be.
And I’ll feel it. That familiar sting. You’re too much. Again.
What’s Actually Happening:
This is how my brain processes the world. Deep, not wide. I don’t skim surfaces—I drill down until I hit bedrock.
The special interest isn’t a distraction. It’s how I learn. How I make sense of things. How I find patterns that others miss.
My best work comes from this place. The philosophy. The frameworks. The connections across domains that shouldn’t connect but do.
The thing everyone rolls their eyes at? That’s the engine. That’s where the insight comes from.
The Cost:
But it’s lonely.
Caring deeply about something no one around you cares about. Seeing something beautiful and having no one to share it with. Knowing that the thing that lights you up is the same thing that makes people back away.
I’ve learned to mask it. Save it for the right moments. Test the waters before diving in.
But sometimes I forget. Sometimes the excitement is too much to contain. And I share—fully, unfiltered—and I watch it land wrong.
Again.
The Ask:
You don’t have to care about the thing I care about.
But if you could care that I care—that would be enough.
Ask a question, even if you don’t fully understand. Let me have three minutes of excitement before you change the subject. Say “I don’t totally get it, but I can see it matters to you.”
That’s not indulging me. That’s seeing me.
And if you really can’t take any more—tell me. Gently. “Hey, I’m at my limit on this one.” I can handle that. What I can’t handle is the slow fade. The eye roll you think I don’t notice.
I always notice.
The Gift:
If you’re ever stuck on something—a problem you can’t solve, a topic you need to understand quickly, a thing you need someone to care about deeply for a short time—I’m your guy.
Point me at it. I’ll drill down. I’ll come back with more than you expected.
That’s the other side of special interests. The thing that exhausts you in casual conversation? It’s a superpower when it’s aimed at something useful.
You just have to know how to aim it.
Literal Thinking
I hear what you say. Exactly what you say.
Not what you meant. Not the subtext. Not the thing you assumed I’d understand without you saying it.
The words. Just the words.
What It Looks Like:
You say “we should hang out sometime.”
I hear a plan. I wait for the date. I wonder why you never followed up.
You meant nothing by it. Just a pleasantry. Something people say.
I didn’t know that. I took you at your word.
You ask “can you grab the door?”
I say “yes” and keep walking.
I answered your question. Yes, I can grab the door.
You wanted me to grab the door. But that’s not what you asked.
You say “I’m fine.”
I believe you. I move on.
You’re upset that I didn’t notice you weren’t fine.
But you said you were fine. How was I supposed to know the words meant the opposite?
What’s Actually Happening:
Most people speak in code. Hints. Implications. They say one thing and mean another, and everyone around them just knows.
I don’t know.
It’s not that I’m stupid. It’s not that I don’t care. My brain just doesn’t automatically decode the hidden layer.
I hear the surface. I respond to the surface. And then I find out there was something underneath that I missed entirely.
Every. Single. Time.
The Cost:
I’ve hurt people without knowing it. Missed cries for help that were disguised as “I’m okay.” Walked past open doors because no one told me to walk through them.
And I’ve been called cold. Uncaring. Oblivious.
I’m not. I’m just literal.
The thing you think is obvious? It’s not obvious to me. The hint you dropped? It fell on the floor. I didn’t see it.
That’s not a choice. It’s a gap—one I’ve spent my whole life trying to bridge.
The Ask:
Say what you mean.
Not hints. Not suggestions. Not “you should know.”
If you want me to grab the door, say “grab the door.” If you want to make plans, say “let’s pick a day.” If you’re not fine, say “I’m not fine.”
I will respond to what you actually say. Every time. You can count on that.
But I can’t respond to what you’re hiding. I don’t have access to that channel.
Direct isn’t rude. Direct is how I stay connected to you.
If you can meet me there, we won’t miss each other.
The Gift:
Here’s the other side: I don’t play games.
When I say something, I mean it. No hidden agenda. No subtext. No manipulation.
If I say I’m fine, I’m fine. If I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there. If I say I care about you, I care about you.
You never have to wonder what I really meant. I already told you.
In a world full of people saying one thing and meaning another, that might be worth something.
The Contradictions
I don’t make sense. I know that.
I can stare down a man twice my size without blinking—but I can’t handle a change in dinner plans.
I can stay calm when everything’s falling apart—but I fall apart when I feel unheard in a conversation.
I look like I’ve got it together. Sometimes I do. And sometimes I’m a child in a man’s body, overwhelmed by something you can’t even see.
What It Looks Like:
Crisis? I’m your guy. Clear head. Steady hands. The more chaotic it gets, the calmer I become. That’s when the training kicks in, when the wiring works for me instead of against me.
But normal life? A loud restaurant. A plan that shifted without warning. A tone of voice I can’t read. That’s where I struggle.
You’ll watch me handle something hard with ease—and then watch me crumble over something small.
It doesn’t make sense. I know. I’ve lived inside this contradiction my whole life.
What’s Actually Happening:
Crisis has rules. Clear stakes. A defined problem. My brain knows what to do with that. It narrows focus. It runs on pattern recognition and training.
And in crisis, I’m in charge.
Not waiting for permission. Not asking if it’s okay to act. Seeing what needs to happen and doing it.
That’s where I’m strongest—when the situation says move and I’m free to move. No committee. No hesitation. Just the problem, the response, and me.
Normal life doesn’t work that way. There are layers. Permissions. Politics. Other people’s feelings to navigate before anything gets done.
Normal life doesn’t have rules. Or it has rules no one told me. Social cues I can’t read. Expectations I didn’t know existed until I failed to meet them.
The “small” thing that breaks me isn’t small. It’s the weight of every unwritten rule I’m trying to track. Every face I’m trying to read. Every signal I might be missing.
In crisis, all of that falls away. There’s just the mission.
That’s why I come alive when everything else falls apart. That’s why I look strong in the storm and shaky in the calm.
The Cost:
People don’t know what to do with me.
“How can someone who did that struggle with this?”
I’ve heard it my whole life. From bosses. From friends. From people who thought they knew me.
He handled combat, but he can’t handle a party. He negotiated a crisis, but he can’t negotiate a disagreement at home. He looks so capable. Why is he acting like a child?
I don’t have a good answer. Just the truth: both things are real. The capable one and the struggling one. They live in the same body.
The Ask:
Don’t expect me to be one or the other.
I’m not always the strong one. I’m not always the struggling one. I’m both, depending on what the situation demands and whether my system can meet it.
When I’m solid, let me be solid. Don’t wait for me to crack.
When I’m struggling, don’t hold it against the solid version. He’ll be back.
Just know that what you’re seeing is real—whichever one it is.
The Gift:
When things go sideways—really sideways—I’m the one you want next to you.
Not because I’m fearless. Because I’ve learned to work with the fear. It becomes data. It becomes focus.
The same wiring that makes me fragile in small moments makes me unshakable in big ones.
That’s the trade. You get both. The contradiction is a package deal.
The Close
This is me. The wiring. The contradictions. The costs and the gifts.
I’m not asking for pity. I’m not asking you to walk on eggshells.
I’m asking you to know what you’re seeing.
And if you can meet me halfway—direct words, a little patience, space when I need it—we’ll be fine.
Better than fine.
Now you know.
What you do with it is up to you.