(((sugahorse)))
As you noted the suicidal ideation is very often a part of a bi-polar trough. The forum is always here, and people will be thinking of you and caring, but remember that a post doesn't always get a rapid reply...so don't let all your hope for companionship through this rest with that. I agree about call ing a hotline, whenever you need it. For me, this level of depression is something I depend upon the regularity of therapy to help me through. Part of the reason I do stick with my therapist through thick and thin is because of the recurrence of just this thing. We work on strategies, new and old, that help me with it to get me through the hours/days/weeks until I rise again. Just as what goes up must come down, in our case, what goes down will come up. The strategies we use include a hotline when I am get frantic--because there is no other contact that is reliable at just that moment: he may be uninterruptible, my husband needs to stay connected to his lessons (and I need him to be able to compartmentalize, so that when he is home with me, he is mine), a forum can be hot on something else at the time, or even in an ebb (there's a sort of group-energy sometimes)...and so on. So: the hotline, us in a general and sometimes specific way, and a strategic attack on the attack with your therapist....that's my recipe.

The danger for me in asking others for their strategies when I am really strung out is that I get frustrated if they don't work and I get mad and then I get sad. Because...what I really, really want, after all, is for--as you say--someone to walk with me through it....that's why I think it's wisest, at least for me, to stick with the "recipe."