May I share some personal experiences? Excuse my oversharing.
I want to assure anyone reading this that I am in no danger, this happened years ago. These are my personal insights and not an 'universal truth'.
It is not a feeling of 'my life is so bad, i want to die', but more like an innate, internalized feeling of constant rot. You may ignore the feeling by keeping yourself occupied, but once you stop for a moment and do nothing, the feeling of 'drowning alive' slowly takes over. This is NOT a constant feeling, this is just how it feels when undergoing an 'episode'; You may spend a week or two feeling 'normal' and then a whole week feeling terrible.
This does not mean that you will feel sad, you will probably feel nothing emotionally, maybe a little bit melancholic.
That is an excelent question! Yes, you can move-out and start anew, as a matter of fact that may help a bit if you are depressed but sadly it will not make the 'weight' in your head go away. As much as you may try to ignore the fact that you do not want to live, the idea will just cling to your head and there is simply nothing you can do to 'take it off'.
To be suicidal does not imply a desire to hurt others, or hate towards the world. If anything someone that is actively suicidal may see the suicidal urges as a threat to his own life. To be suicidal you may have a skewed perception of reality in the first place, you may not see the point of anything at all, no matter what religion or philosophy you follow.
There would be no point in killing someone else if the point of it all is that you do not see a point in anything at all.
When it comes to friends, family, religion or society, those are not sources of comfort, but chains that prevent you from 'leaving'.
Sadly it is a bit more complex than just that. Even if you were to be stoic about it, even if you apply logic to it, and even if you 'exit' the system altogether, your mind will still bug you as much as it can whenever an episode happens. Sometimes the episodes might become so overwhelimg that you will feel like a danger to yourself, it is at these times that a person might panic, as their mind is actively 'forcing' them to kill themselves. To die is the only thought that occupies the mind, there is no logical reason for this.
Feelings with such a strong crisis might include shame, fear, panic and powerlessness. Some peole might seek help at this stage, because it is truly scary when your every thought is suicide.
There is something else I forgot to mention, it is common to isolate oneself during these episodes. To put some distance between you, family, friends and everyone else, so you can be alone. You feel the desire and need to be alone. Ultimately this can lead to a scenario where your mind is actively working against you, and you've got nothing else to hold onto, so what the heck do you do? You panic, of course, trigger whatever 'coping' mechanism you have (I usually drew) and hope for the best.
This is a process that may take years, years of 'good weeks' and 'crisis weeks' up until one point when you finally come to the realization that you are going to die, and there is no way out. If you have been actively fighting the urges for years and trying to live a life despite all this, you may prompt yourself to ask 'what even was the point of my life, of all this'. This painful thought could mean that you are throwing the last possible coping mechanism out the window.
Now, how many suicide attempts does it take to effectively end one's own life?
That's a tricky question, because it depends on the 'chances' the person gets.
I remember my first flirt with death, I was 14 leaning down a window in the third floor of the house, I kept thinking about how I could end it so easily if I just jumped head-first. I was too scared to suffer, however.
My second flirting session came in the form of a gun, I was sitting alone in a room with a rifle I was supposed to guard, of course the thing was between my hands. As I sat in the chair looking at nothing in particular, I found myself holding the rifle under my chin as my body flirted with the though of loading it and pulling the trigger. I got really scared when I realized this and spent the rest of my time in there far away from the rifle.
I think it's important to note how one does not reason much before these things, it's not premeditated, it's just natural. Of course there have been many 'accidents' on the way, one that is suicidal might not care that much about dangerous situations, might in fact seek-out dangerous situations as to try and die without having to pull the trigger.
Now, for premeditated suicide, that's a different beast. To premeditate one's suicide feels quite uplifting, you may feel genuinely happy as you prepare everything with a lot of care to finally tap-out of existence. I know this seems counter-intuitive but again suicide is not a logical thing, it is an innate desire of the body that goes against the mind and against logic. Suicide in this way is not a decision nor is it a 'feeling', it is an urge.
Again, these are just personal notes on what is like to be actively suicidal from 12 to 24 years old and not an universal truth. Still, I want to just expose that suicide is a tad more complicated than just 'lift and move countries bro', it is an ingrained desire.
I spent way too much time writing this, I will spellcheck it and format it later, sorry.
