17 KiB
+++ title = "Hello (again), World!" date = 2025-09-15 description = "A few words on my 2025 so far, plus my plans for its remainder and beyond."
[taxonomies] tags = ["Personal"] +++
{{ admonition(type="warning", title="TRIGGER WARNING", text="This post discusses depression, death, and suicide.") }}
I've done it!
Here's my first post of 2025 - better late than never, I guess. Although the first quarter was actually quite decent, the second quarter was anything but. Yet as we're heading into the final month of the thrid quarter, I'm somewhat grateful for Q2 turning out the way it did. Q2 kicked off a series of events that ultimately helped me understand myself better and improve my mood in the long run.
But let's rewind to January.
Q1 2025 - starting off nicely
{{ aside(text="DSA stands for Data Structures and Algorithms.") }}
In January, I managed to get an exemption from both a statistics and DSA exam, meaning I only had to take a networking and databases one (from which you couldn't get exemptions for some reason).
In February, I passed the aforementioned exams on my first try, meaning I could enjoy my winter break and release my first Rust crate. Really pleased with how it turned out, and it's got 2 stars on GitHub at the time of writing. While it's not my most starred repo, I'll happily take these 2 stars over 0.
In March, I attended Rustikon with my uni's Rust science club and wrote an article (in Polish) about our positive experience there. It got featured by the organisers in their own blog post, which marks probably the first time my writing got mentioned anywhere.
So far so good! I can't wait to see what April has in stock for me...
Q2 2025 - losing power
The answer is... drumroll
April
Mood swings and consistent lack of motivation to do anything productive apart from uni assignments. Seemingly overnight, I would frequently find myself just collapsing on my bed shortly after coming back home, often accompanied by strong headaches. I wasn't struggling academically, the workload wasn't overhwelming, but I just felt so fucking done with all that bullshit.
{{ admonition(type="note", text="While I generally refrain from cursing in blog posts, the last sentence seems fitting as an illustration of my overall mood at that point in time.") }}
I mean, surely it was a temporary low. I just needed to hold myself together until my midterms in July and I'd be fine, right? Right???
May
Oh boy, we're in for one hell of a ride for the upcoming 3 months.
My 20th birthday
I was supposed to turn 20 on the 8th. My oldest sister even invited me out for a pizza, so this had to be the turning point. I opened up Discord in the morning, got some happy birthday messages, followed by a whiplash.
My good friend Arran had unexpectedly passed away in his sleep.
I called up my sister to cancel the party and to explain the whole situation. Although she'd initially accepted my request, she called back a few hours later asking if I'd changed my mind. Ultimately I did end up going out with her and spent some quality time together, but the feeling of guilt for not grieving properly kept tormenting me throughout the whole evening.
Engine is gone
Even though I'd managed to come to terms with my loss rather quickly, the continuous lack of will to do... almost anything, was still there. My only desire was to drop out of uni entirely, because I'd flat-out stopped enjoying programming altogether.
{{ aside(text="DNF stands for Did Not Finish.") }}
At the same time, what else was I meant to do with my life? After all, I'd invested so much time and energy into this hobby from the age of 10 (the entire latter half of my life thus far!), but something had killed the engine in my race for making a career in the tech industry. One part of me wanted to DNF from said race, but the other begged to keep going just a little longer to meet the sponsors' (ie. my parents') requirements.
And sure enough, they brought up a similar argument during one of our calls, saying they'd invested so much money and I just couldn't pull out midway through the studies. I certainly understood their point of view, but also felt as if they didn't understand mine.
Possible culprit
A few days later, my oldest sister called me again. She'd spoken with my parents about my long streak of consistently bad mood and they all decided to schedule a session with a psychiatrist for me on the 14th of May. This visit served as a general interview to profile me and identify potential causes of my horrible condition. So, what was her recommendation?
Getting an autism diagnosis.
I'd actually been suspecting ASD for about 3 years, but constantly shrugged it off as me simply being weird/introverted, despite my neurodivergent friends stating I couldn't have been a more obvious case. Even though this wasn't a proper confirmation (but rather a green light to seek one), I could already feel a bit of relief. I wasn't completely insane after all.
June
The swing continues to move up and down, but increasingly more violently.
Test, test, test
Another recommendation from the doctor was doing a blood test, because my diet had been very restrictive since... well, my very early childhood. To this day, it consists exclusively of processed food, because I can't stand the appearance and smell of pretty much all the normal dishes out there. Despite that, I'm actually a little underweight, because my apetite is quite low most of the time.
But anyway, the results indicated plenty of vitamin deficiencies. Shocking, I know.
I also took some autism screening tests to further validate my suspicions and potentially bring up the results to the doctor doing my proper diagnosis. Here's a list of the assesments I completed, along with my scores. By the way, shout-out to Embrace Autism for the amazing breakdowns of these tests and automated scoring tools.
- Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ)
- Score: 45
- Aspie Quiz (version 4)
- Neurodiverse score: 139
- Neurotypical score: 67
- Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q)
- Overall score: 132
- Compensation subtotal: 39
- Masking subtotal: 39
- Assimilation subtotal: 54
- Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised (RAADS‑R)
- Overall score: 166
- Language subtotal: 11
- Social relatedness subtotal: 90
- Sensory/motor subtotal: 25
- Circumscribed interests subtotal: 40
Every single score indicated a great likelihood of me being on the spectrum, which lead to me initiating a formal diagnosis process.
A new low
Unfortunately, I started having those internal visions (not hallucinations) of me throwing myself off a bridge into the Vistula river. I would also experience heightened anxiety in public places, unusually low apetite, difficulties falling asleep, as well as a general sense of being a waste of space. I stopped tinkering with my homelab, I left pretty much every Discord I was active in, I deleted some social media accounts... I was gradually withdrawing from life.
At that point I hadn't made any concrete arrangements or resorted to self-harm. I'm quite anxious when handling needles or sharp blades, and while we're not talking outright fear of these objects, I'm definitely afraid of accidentally cutting myself, let alone doing that deliberately.
Anyhow, this was no longer burnout. This was depression.
The second best time is now
In May, I foolishly declined getting prescription meds, still trying to believe it was all just a temporary low. But this time around I had no choice, but to start taking antidepressants. I also got some antianxiety pills, sleeping pills, and vitamin suppliments. Of course, they wouldn't start working overnight, and I was still feeling directionless with regards to my future.
It was a step forward, though.
Q3 2025 - going to hell and back
Just like that, we're halfway through 2025.
July
Even though I didn't have to take any exams (either because of getting an exemption or the exams being required only for a higher grade from a given course), the swing turned into a giant rollercoaster.
The good
On the 4th of July, I received a proper diagnosis: 6A02.0, which is the ICD-11 code for autism spectrum disorder without intellectual development disorders or functional language impairment. Although I saw it coming given all the evidence I'd gathered, making it official felt incredibly relieving and eye-opening.
I was the gifted kid in primary school, but also the socially awkward nerd who could only talk about F1 and computers. I was the guy who would sometimes finger drum during breaks, because even when he didn't have his headphones on, his brain would internally autoplay snippets of his favourite tracks. I was the guy who consistently refused to go on multi-day school trips or to family receptions, because he wouldn't be able to cope with all the people and food there.
These are only select examples, but reframing them in the context of ASD makes so much more sense. What also made sense when reframed in that context, was my mood at the start of April. I might have experienced what's commonly referred to as autistic burnout. It can probably be best described as chronic fatigue typically lasting 3 months or longer, caused by ignoring one's autistic needs and intensified masking of such traits.
If not treated properly, it can evolve (or should I say devolve) into depression and suicidal ideation. Sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it?
The equally good
Before we talk about the bad and ugly, let's stay with the good for one more minute. I had my next visit scheduled for the 1st of August to check in on me and the effects of antidepressants, so I needed a measurable way to track my overall mood for the upcoming 4 weeks in between.
That's how I came up with a little spreadsheet, where I'd rate each day on an integer-only scale from 1 to 5 (the greater the number, the better my mood). The raw data was complemented by various charts, such as:
- a stepped line chart of ratings changing day-by-day
- a histogram of each rating's frequency across the whole month
- a boxplot chart of the ratings' distribution for each week and the whole month
- a column chart for the average rating of each weekday
By the way, if you're a stats nerd, then you might enjoy the aforementioned histogram:
{{ dual_theme_image(light_src="images/hello-again-world/ratings-histogram.svg", dark_src="images/hello-again-world/ratings-histogram-dark.svg" alt="Histogram of ratings' frequencies throughout the majority of July 2025. The respective frequencies for each rating are: 4, 5, 9, 5, 4. This makes the chart appear symmetric along an invisible vertical line that splits the 3 ratings' bar in half.") }}
It closely resembles a normal distribution with an expected value of 3 and a standard deviation of approximately 1.25. When I started my experiment, I was actually expecting to see that distinct shape appear at some point, but not in the very first month.
At any rate, this project brought me some much needed joy, even though it wasn't strictly a programming one. I'm not going to showcase that spreadsheet or the rest of these visualisations just yet, but you will get to see that project's continuation. More on that later.
But now the time has inevitably come for discussing...
The bad and ugly
As much as the 4th of July can be considered one of my highest points of the year, the 17th is without a doubt the absolute lowest. That's because I wasn't just contemplating suicide - I started planning it.
The strangest thing about these arrangements, is that there was no single major catalyst responsible for setting this whole process in motion. The only thing I remember is me lying in my bed and starting to sob uncontrollably for no apparent reason. I couldn't see any other way out of the whole situation I described earlier than ending my own life. It just so happened to be that specific day of that specific month.
{% admonition(type="info", title="NOT SO FUN FACT") %} The 17th of July 2025 marked the 10th anniversary of Jules Bianchi's death, as well as the 30th anniversary of Juan Manuel Fangio's death. If that's not unfortunate enough, this date comes 13 days after the 4th of July. {% end %}
Anyway, I set the date to the 1st of October 2025. Before heading out to the Warsaw Central train station, I wanted to send personalised goodbye videos to 10 of my closest friends from various circles between 7 AM and 10 AM depending on when I'd wake up. These videos would feature me explaining why they earned the questionble honour and why I was peacing out for good, and obviously thanking them for everything.
What would follow is a walk from my flat to platform no. 3 or 4 of the train station. From there on, it would be a matter of waiting for the first train that would just so happen to be passing by, before I'd dash to the tracks and jump. Thankfully, this is as fleshed-out as these plans ever got.
August
The ride is getting calmer for once. Still running into some occasional bumps every now and then, but it actually looks promising this time around.
Amplification
I visited my psychiatrist again on the 1st of August to do a check-up on me and the effects of meds thus far. I presented the results of my spreadsheet experiment, but also revealed the suicide plans. Despite the worrying lows, she praised me for making progress over the past 4 weeks and prescribed me an increased dose of the same antidepressants I'd been taking since June.
I scheduled my next visit for the 23rd of September and prepared the second edition of my fancy mood tracker. It was more of an evolution rather than a revolution of the project, with the only somewhat major feature update being an addition of rating frequency histograms for each week and month.
Reinvigoration
I finally noticed a consistent positive shift in my mood, as well as its greater stability during the day. The anxiety attacks practically disappeared, I could finally get proper sleep, but most importantly: I genuinely felt like doing stuff again and sticking around beyond the 1st of October.
Some of the folks from my goodbye list reached out to me after I quit the Discord servers they were on. They were legitimately concerned about the radio silence from me practically everywhere, perhaps even wondering if I'd actually managed to take my own life. I'm forever grateful for their support, and of course I'd eventually go on to rejoin their servers.
Decision
Since I was (at long last) in the right place mentally, I could finally have a serious conversation with my parents and sisters about my future. It felt like the former were finally understanding of my needs given the still recent diagnosis and wanted to protect me from another autistic burnout.
Therefore we agreed to have me switch from studying onsite to online in a bid to decrease the sensory load I'd have to cope with on a daily basis and provide me with more freedom to pursue passion projects. I'd also get to stay in my flat in Warsaw, because I'd grown quite attached to that city over my 2 years living there.
September so far
My request to switch modes got accepted, although it's effective from the semester following the upconming one, which I find rather disappointing. I'm also in the middle of rebuilding this website, with the release of this post serving as a soft launch of sorts.
I've also decided to dust off my Bluesky account, do an internal restructuring of my homelab (architectural breakdown coming up soon), and last but not least - start therapy to work on myself, plus handle any future autistic burnout more gracefully instead of spiralling into depression.
Q4 2025 and beyond - expressing myself more
I hope to allocate more time towards working on my personal projects and this blog. The former will see a mix of me experimenting more with Python and the dataviz side of things, as well as revisiting some of my already released apps that I believe deserve more love.
The latter will see an introduction of a monthly report on my mood ratings with more visualisations and highlights from the real world. There will also be technical breakdowns of some of the aforementioned projects.
Final thoughts
A big, big thank you goes out to my friends for their support in my darkest hours and you for reading this whole post. Looking forward to seeing you in the next one.
Take care!