Let's be honest...

If there's anyone out there like me...and even though I'm new to a community setting like this, I have to believe that "we" share some common thoughts and experiences in our battles with depression...namely thoughts of suicide.  If I'm going to be perfectly honest I will say that when the ideas come they range from the mild..."I don't know how much more of this I can take" to the more severe... "If I can just hold on till this passes...remember that this will pass, remember that this will pass..."

For me...my reasons for not killing myself range from my personal beliefs that cutting my time short in this lifetime will just delay/postpone things till my next lifetime and I might as well stick it out... to the more resonating "I love my family too much to put them through that..." I can't fathom the pain I would cause them (although I am familiar with the depths where even that isn't enough).  And in my experience, even though the highs are inevitably followed by lows...the lows are still always followed once again by the relief of better, good, even wonderful and joyous times.  

I have to admit, however, that I don't think I can be this candid with my doctor/therapist.  If I say to them, "Yes.  I do have thoughts of suicide...BUT..." I fear they would overreact (perhaps rightfully so) and take some sort of drastic measure that would call attention to the situation in a more public or invasive way.  Am I alone in this?  

I don't know.  It's only been in the last two years that I've named it Depression even though I now know, in retrospect, that I've been severely depressed for different periods of my life ever since I was a child.  It's odd to me that I've sought out this forum during an "upswing" as I've recently shed the shroud of a particularly rough patch...and as previous experience has shown...right now, things look pretty bright.