I’m confused

I’m not sure if this is the right place to be posting this, but i’m not sure where else to ‘rant’ about it.
So I started University just over a month ago, and since about a week after I arrived I have been in something of a downward spiral. My flatmates are all nice, there’s lots to do and lots of people to meet but I am becoming increasingly unhappy.
I can fake it around others, act happy and interested but I can’t stand doing so. I shut myself up in my room for days at a time, not being able to leave because the very thought of doing so makes me want to curl up and cry. Speaking of which I hadn’t cried for years and now I find it happening quite regularly, and uncontrollably.
Every day I think about ending it. If there was a way I could do so without hurting anybody else I may have done so already. If there was a way I could have everyone forget about me too, that would be nice. When I manage to get to lectures I tend to sit there and think about my own death, which means I will be falling behind soon since I’m not concentrating.
I can’t really tell anyone I know how I feel. Before I came to Uni I was the happiest person you’d ever meet, and I want everyone at home to think of me as that.
Perhaps if there was a way to make my death matter that wouldn’t concern me. To die nobly for a cause, though I suppose that is the mark of an immature man (Casual Catcher in the Rye reference).

There are free counselling services and doctors available to me (The benefit of being at this University, and having a national health services) but I wonder if they could really help, and I hate the idea of going for outside help. It would make me feel weaker than everybody else and I’m pitiful enough as it is.

Maybe I have misunderstood this whole site and now people will be reading this thinking
‘Why is this internet person spilling their guts out to me?’
I don’t know what i’m looking for here. Advice? Perhaps solidarity? Some kind of explanation as to what caused such a drastic change?
Thanks, L.O