Living on the other side of fear

outliving ordinary

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The Inner Monologue is an unfiltered, unstructured thought-dump newsletter — penned by AD.

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It’s 3:07 AM.
I haven’t written in months.

Didn’t feel like I had anything worth saying. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to say it.

But something shifted tonight, and I couldn’t go to sleep without getting this out.
So here I am, showing up - raw, unedited, a little nervous, but very much alive.

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Three months ago, I texted my therapist at 1AM frantically weeping and said I didn’t want to live anymore.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. I meant it.

I was suffering a panic attack.

Life was… gone.
I couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t see the point. And I couldn’t express myself.

I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. Adult ADHD - not the cute, distracted kind, but the chaotic, impulsive, can’t-sit-still, can’t-hold-a-thought kind. Also spectrum-level personality disorder. All at once.

And suddenly it all made sense.

The constant restlessness. The way I jump from idea to idea. The highs that look like genius and the crashes that no one sees.
The way I mess up conversations, miss social cues, burn out, numb out, disappear.

People have called me reckless.
Insensitive. Detached.

“Arun, you’re too much”
And maybe they were right - but now I understand why.

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I saw the wreckage clearly for the first time. I saw myself.

So yeah. That’s where I’ve been.
Inside my head.

Fighting like hell to find some air.

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Let me explain what all this means — not clinically, but experientially:

Depression isn’t just sadness.
It’s emptiness. A weight you carry through everything - work, conversations, even rest.
Waking up and not knowing why you should.
Being around people and still feeling completely alone. Having dreams and zero will to chase them.

ADHD isn’t just distraction. It’s a constant war in your head. 20 tabs open, all playing music.
You forget things you care about. You jump between ideas because they all feel urgent.
You feel like you’re letting people down constantly - and you are - but not because you want to.

Anxiety is like living in fight-or-flight mode, all the time.
You overthink every word. You spiral from one what-if to the next.
You feel like something terrible is about to happen… even when nothing’s wrong.

Panic attacks are your body screaming when your mind shuts down. And they come without warning.

Borderline traits make it harder to form and hold relationships.
Your emotions go from 0 to 100.
You crave closeness but push people away.
You overattach, then detach.
You don’t trust the good - you’re just waiting for it to leave. (clearly explains my inability to hold relationships)

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I’ve lived with all of this for years.
The diagnosis helped me a lot to understand myself and cope with all that I was going through in a better way.

I thought I was just “too much.”
Too emotional. Too distracted. Too intense. Too inconsistent.

Turns out, I was just undiagnosed.
And tired of surviving.

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But here’s the part I want you to hear -
From the darkness, something new began.

That the very mess I hated about myself…
Would be the thing that cracked something open.

Because from rock bottom, I started creating.

I started this very newsletter Inner Monologue for me - around the same time I was finally given a name for the chaos I’d been living with.

I started a podcast, Beginnings - on early stage startups. When you start something, it’s messy and all you deal with is ambiguity. I was craving real conversations with people still in the chaos. Still building. Still figuring it out. I didn’t want to talk to the ones who had it all together. I wanted the messy middle. We shot an entire season within a week, day and night. (See Instagram)

Then I launched Project Vanta - a 75-day thought experiment. It all started as a fun challenge between us 3 friends - to grow into the push each other and become the best version of ourselves. What happens when we eat, move, rest and grow with intention? Soon there were many takers who joined the movement. We are right now a community of 350+ people doing this. (See Instagram)

(I’ll write a more about these in my future newsletters)

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These things didn’t fix me.
They gave me momentum.

They reminded me I don’t want to live an ordinary life.
Outlive. The fear. The diagnosis. The expectations. The version of me that almost gave up.

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I move fast. I think fast.
Sometimes I get called reckless.
Sometimes I miss cues, drop balls, let people down.

But this is me - all my chaos, all my contradictions, all my heart.
And I’ve stopped apologizing for my wiring.
Stopped editing myself to fit what’s expected.
Started owning the mess - and building something meaningful with it.

This newsletter - The Inner Monologue - started with the line:

“To live a life less ordinary.”

Today, I’m ready to say:

I want to OUTLIVE ORDINARY.

Because I’ve tasted what it means to nearly lose it all.
And now, I want to build something that matters.

No more hiding.
No more shame.

Just me - in pursuit of something better.

And slowly, piece by piece…

I’m falling in love with the process of ‘becoming’.

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I want to say this clearly:

If you’re struggling -
If you’re numbing, spiraling, hiding, pretending -

You are not broken. You are becoming.

And sometimes,

‘the becoming’…starts on the other side of fear.

See you next Sunday (hopefully).
- AD