Back from the brink of suicide: Alex Hilton explains how despair nearly drove him to end his life and what saved him

On the outside, Alex Hilton was happy and gregarious. No one could have guessed that for a year he was obsessed with ending his life. He explains how he vanquished his demons – and what those terrible 12 months taught him

In 2009 I wanted so badly to die. This wasn't depression but the absolute, unremitting pain of meningitis. If I hadn't been weak, delirious and bedridden I would have ended myself without debate.

Throughout that agony and the months of recovery, my partner Sally looked out for me, and I can only guess at the compromises she made in her life while I was too drugged on painkillers to really appreciate her sacrifices.

As I recovered, my perspective changed. I became less flippant, less patient. I took my work more seriously and I buried those uncomfortable suicidal feelings that were no longer relevant. But a few months later, the company I worked for went under in highly stressful circumstances. I weathered this and got another job at a more stable organisation. Everything would have been fine if, three months later, my friend Mark hadn't jumped off a building.

I had no idea that Mark was depressed. This man, for whom I would have done anything – who had been supportive of me in many ways – had carefully kept me away from his emotional self. I had done nothing for him, I hadn't even tried and I didn't know that I should have. And he had died.

So my twisted personal relationship with death, which I had buried, just burst out of me, and I could barely think of anything else. It became an obsession and, day after day, every moment of my spare time was spent thinking about ways to kill myself.

I would visualise my death three times on the way to work. I'd stand at the end of the platform where the trains were fastest and wonder if this would be the time I would jump. I'd fantasise about how I could buy a gun. I had a new job, working with great people who were becoming my friends, and somehow my life split into two. I was jolly, motivated Alex, focused at work and laughing and joking in the pub afterwards. And there was the secret me, working constantly on ever more detailed plans for how to kill myself with the least pain and the least bother to anyone else.

But I couldn't hide myself from Sally. With her, I became withdrawn, surly, slow to casual conversation and quick to argue. I'd avoid her by going out with my friends, coming home late and sleeping in the spare room "so that I wouldn't disturb her". I was lethargic, inert and would spend hours playing computer games. I couldn't avoid her, so I shut her out.

But my close friends I could avoid, and I saw them less and less. I had become a person with two lives; an active, motivated facade and a dark, suicide-obsessed core. And I knew my "real" life was the secret life inside me.

I realised what Mark had been through; the two lives that he had had, and that the Mark I knew was only the facade he had presented. I felt I knew him better than I ever had when he was alive. My happy and gregarious public face was an escape from the real me. My focus on work was an escape. Playing computer games was an escape. I just wanted to escape.

It would be lurid to detail every dark thought that I had and everything I did to myself. But one Friday night highlights how riven I was inside. I'd had a pleasant evening in the pub with my colleagues. But instead of going home, I checked into a hotel and tried to kill myself. My fear and rising panic were accompanied by a real joy that at last this miserable life was going to end. I had no thoughts of the people in my life, or even the poor hotel cleaner who would have found me.

Clearly, I was unsuccessful, and I had hurt myself superficially in the process. I was bruised, I had marks on my neck. There were blood spots in the skin on my face and my eyes were bloodshot. I was so useless I couldn't even kill myself. I cried for so long in that cheap hotel room. And then when I was out of tears I checked out, went home and slept in the spare room as usual. For a few days, I took care to wear high collars and complained of a rash on my face to explain the blood spots.

Around this time, Sally confronted me about our relationship, and while my depression was no surprise to her, she was shocked to hear of my obsession with suicide. I didn't bounce back to good mental health suddenly. She urged me to get help. She would do things to distract me. And I know that she cried a lot, too. And I still wanted to die and to escape. I wondered if I would cope better if I lived on the streets, where it could just be me without a facade.

One day, she bought me a counselling session. She paid for it and gave me the number and said it was there whenever I wanted to make the appointment. And there was a day when I'd had enough of being incapable of life and I booked the appointment.

The strange thing is, I never attended it. Something switched inside me. I had taken an action towards making myself better and that somehow gave me permission to take other actions. Somehow, with Sally's support, I started to knit my two personalities together again, so that the joys in my life were real and I had the power to take responsibility for my own happiness. I could talk to her about my feelings because they were real, but we could do fun things together because they were real, too.

I realised that I was getting out of the habit of thinking about suicide and it stopped happening altogether. I was happier – or, more strictly, I was happy or sad based on real things in my life, rather than being constantly depressed.

I have just described a year of my life when I was secretly ill, how I think I got ill and how I think I got better. But I had broken my relationship with Sally. I had taken too much from her and given her too little. But I also changed. I'm more resilient. I lean on my friends emotionally more openly, and I'm careful not to allow myself to develop a secret inner life.

I'm also lucky. Not necessarily because I'm alive, but because of the interesting things I'm doing and the fascinating people I meet. Because I'm allowing life to enrich me. My day job now is stressful, intense and often gets on top of me. But it doesn't make me depressed and it helps that the job is a lot of fun.

Writing this isn't easy. My miserable year feels shameful and I'm embarrassed about what friends, family and colleagues might think about or say to me – that people might look at me strangely or start treating me as though I'm fragile. But I know that shame and embarrassment can feed a secret inner self, building a wall between a person's emotional state and their ability to cope. Maybe a bit of embarrassment will be good for me.

But look inside yourself. Think about whether you are hiding a secret person inside you. If you feel in the tiniest way like I did, risk a little embarrassment and tell someone who cares about you, or failing that, tell your GP, or call a helpline.

And if you don't feel this way at all, that's brilliant, but could you be the friend I failed to be for Mark? Could you be the person who pushes just a little harder when one of your friends is too attached to their escapes? Or when they withdraw? Or perhaps you could just donate to the charity Mind, which helps so many people, perhaps in the memory of my friend Mark, who was less fortunate than me. Whenever I hear of someone who takes their life, I feel for them and the people who care about them. I feel for Sally and everything she bore for me and I feel for my friend Mark and his family and it saddens me. But that's fine, because it is sad, and I'm so grateful to be feeling anything at all.

justgiving.com/markhanson