What do I do?

So I came to the US about five years ago for college, and in that time, in the sort of freedom permitted by this country, I began to fully turn my mind to an issue that had been bothering me for a quite a long time - my sexuality. I'm originally from Ghana, which is as homophobic as homophobic gets, short of the public beheadings ISIS is known to visit on LGBT members, so growing up, I was repeatedly inculcated with sights, teachings, rumors, belief systems, etc that reinforced the view that gay = evil. Even still I knew in some part of me that I had a strong attraction to guys, but fear for my safety/sanity meant I repressed it as much as I could, and I was fortunate to be both smart, persuasive and not effeminate (I'm by no stretch of the imagination masculine either) that I managed to escape scrutiny. However in 2010 I got a full-ride scholarship to college in the US, and seemingly escaped what was bound to be a hugely repressive and unhappy life. I'll spare you most of the stresses of my subsequent coming journey, but it took me four years of painfully working through my various misconceptions and fears and talking to other gay people to come to the realisation that I liked guys, and that there was nothing wrong with it. I came out to my close friends last year at the end of graduation, and they've all been very supportive. I came out to my very religious, homophobic African mother as well, and the least said about her reaction, the better.Anyway to cut things short, I am now faced with this huge dilemma - my visa expires end of next year (I'm even currently not on a visa but I have a work permit application which is pending processing so I'm basically stuck some sort of weird legal limbo regarding my eligibility to remain in the US). If the work permit is approved I'm allowed to remain in the US until Dec 2016. Now my dilemma is that expiration of my work permit would mean leaving back to Ghana, which would in turn mean either undoing years of my struggle and pretending to be straight again, or attempting to remain true to myself and remaining out, with all the very scary dangers that involves (ostracism, state persecution, disownment, physical bashing, imprisonment, etc). I have no idea what to do. I'm not in a relationship so I can hurriedly get married and apply for a green card, and I'd love to go to medical school, but I can't afford it on my own and I don't know anyone who'd be willing to co-sign for loans for me. In the past month or so, I've been out of work as well since my last work permit expired in July, and I'm so stressed out as to my situation - I had to call the Suicide helpline about a week ago because I felt like ending things. I've lost weight, and I can barely eat - every waking moment is spent worrying about bleak the future looks. It's too late to apply for LGBT asylum because the deadline is within a year of arriving in the US and I had no idea. I'm tearing up as I write this because I quite literally have no idea what to do, and I'm scared.If anyone has any advice they think would be helpful, please share, even if it's a few words of support, because I feel lost