For anyone who has attempted/considered suicide but is alive and better now, how did you make it through and keep going?

Worf.

As in Lieutenant Commander Worf.

When I was growing up I was obsessed with Star Trek. Once I hit my teens depression hit pretty hard and ... well things were not good. I battled with it on my own for 10 years or so and it would come in waves. Sometimes I would just have a bad day, sometimes I would look at the balcony of my apartment and think "it would be just so easy to jump off and end it, so easy for it all to go away". Looking back now ... those thoughts honestly scare the shit out of me.

Not sure how it came about, but I think I was going through another rough patch and was binge watching Star Trek TNG again. There was something comforting about the show for some reason. Anyhow, there is this one episode where Worf gets his back broken and asks Riker to kill him so he can die with Honor instead of live the rest of his life paralyzed. Living the rest of his life paralyzed was something he just could not do, or face. For some reason that resonated with me.

To me, Worf was running from his problems. In his eyes his life, his future, was just pain and dishonor from there on in. It was not worth living. Like mine was. Too much pain, too much sadness, for nothing. Suicide, honorable or otherwise, was a way for him to escaping the personal hell that was now his life.

I realized that really, Worf was actually being dishonorable. He was being a coward. He was thrown a bad hand in life, and instead of facing it, instead of dealing with it, he was going to run from it.

Suicide was not an honorable way to die. In reality a cowards way out.

So after that whenever things got bad ... Worf would end up in my head shouting at me that its a cowards way out.

Found the episode: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ethics_(episode)

This was not the only thing. But it really helped me through the rough spots in the beginning. Exercise, positive self talk, and a lot of reading into depression also helped. Understanding the sickness can really shed light on things. In hind sight I probably should have reached out for help but I was too scared.

To all those affected stay strong, it does get better.

Depression lies

/r/AskReddit Thread