"The general feeling afterwards was that my perception of reality had been totally limited to the issues in front of me, and that life was bigger than just that."
This, it has been the similar case with me. I really thought that my life is completely ruined, with no chance of saving myself. People I trusted told me how fucked my future is if I don't do anything to fix it. They called me a monster for doing things they don't expect anyone doing. My parents believed that they must have fucked up my upbringing somehow.
So I spent my last day, said good bye to all my friends. Had my last lunch, and then went to kitchen to end it all. In my head I have clear memory of everything until the moment I picked up the knife. After that, I don't really remember much, but I didn't do anything.
It would be hard to believe but I was in sixth grade when this happened, and all the stuff I was talking about were my grades(and the monster thing was my parents caught my masturbating).
Years down the road, when I got my first beej, I looked back and realized man I am so glad that I didn't kill myself, and if it ever comes down to another moment like that, there's no way I am ever killing myself.
Lol, ok so I am sure the adult me's rationalizations for living life are a lot different than that of a horny 18yr old's. I maybe embarrassed to think that there was a time when I thought life is worth living, if only it means I could get laid once more, but I am not ashamed of it. However, I am ashamed of thinking that life isn't worth living when I thought bad grades meant end of my life.
These days, I use a simple trick or process whenever I continuously revaluate my life. Everytime I see someone with my background or someone I can connect with, get into deep shit, I put myself in their shoes and think "if I was Ross Ulbricht, would I not think that life is worth living?", "What reason would I have to live if I got sentenced as much as Aaron Schwartz was facing?", "What if I was trapped on WTC buildings, with smoke coming out of everywhere, would I jump?", "What if I had inoperable cancer and I was gonna die within next few months?".
It is one of the most cathartic measures you can take. Every single time when I think of myself in the shoes of these people, I realize that I wouldn't kill myself no matter what. I would write books from prison, communicate with the rest of the world through letters, if I ever went there for doing things like Aaron Schwartz or Ross Ulbricht. If death seemed close then I would take those last moments of my life and all the moments which gave me pleasure, I will go through all the cherished memories instead of taking the quicker way out.
I don't know what you're going through, but the sheer fact that you made this post means you would wanna read the comments in this thread before you quit. You made a throwaway because you don't want people to infer your real identity or judge you while you're alive. I also know that other comments which simply say "call hotline" would barely convince you to call the hotline. You made a post on HN, this IS your hotline. Telling a HNer to call suicide hotline is like telling a Linux user to call tech support line.
BUT, here's one suggestion I can make. If you do call hotline or make more posts or talk to other people, you will get the same pleasure as you did while reading responses of this thread, except you can talk in more detail with them and be more specific. I promise you that it would be more fun than this thread.