[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Hope and despair came into it later. I think both are only truly understood when we experience the depths that life has to offer, and for some this can come at a very young age, for others it happens later in life as the events we have been through take their toll.

Very true. Many older folks look at the younger generations and think "They can't possibly understand.", somehow forgetting what it was like to be young and in pain. The worst is still the worst for an individual, no matter how much worse the worst was for another. I know that that's a choppy sentence, but I can't think of a better way to convey it.

I'm 18. Even close friends don't know what my worst was. Two, maybe three, people in the world have a pretty decent idea. They look at me and see the kind of annoying person that is good at just about everything she does. To quote a friend, I "have all the luck". Untrue. I've felt more deeply than I care to remember. My "luck" disappeared on me for quite length of time. My worst was bad by anyone's standards. But you know what? The worst gives you hope. It's not that hope finds its way through, forcing it's way past the darkness that Lal describes here:

Originally Posted by Lal

Anyone who has suffered depression will understand why hope and despair are akin, as the despair may take you down to the bottom of a very dark well, but the hope is the tiny chink of light that helps guide you out again, even if you do not realise it for some time. If the hope was not there then the despair would take over.

When you hit despair, you know that there's only one way to go. Things can't get any worse. You hope like hell that this really is despair. Talk about a backwards idea, but follow it for a moment: when you sink that low, you want nothing more than for it to be rock bottom. You know that once you're there, the only way for your life to go is up. That's slightly comforting. The hope comes in in terms of "Please, please let this be a worst, because if I get a papercut in the next thirty seconds..."

I remember discussing death with counselors. I've been told by many that a person is least suicidal when they've hit despair. They're too exhausted to bother and they know deep down that it can't get any worse. The most worry comes just a bit before despair... when things really suck and the person is terrified that it will only get worse. Despair allows for hope on the part of the individual, on the part of his or her friends, on the part of everyone. Once you hit despair, you can go through life with the philosophy "Hey, I've lived through ____. It's not like it can get any worse." That's quite cheerful, in a cynical sort of way. You know that if you could handle what you already did, you can handle something else. A whimsical example was last term's term paper. I look at this term with this philosophy: "I got an A on a 20 page term paper about literary theory. I can handle this term's 10 page paper." or "I had X professor last term. I can handle anyone's class now."

You know that you've worked your hardest, you hit despair, and you bounced back (even if it was an itty bitty bounce that didn't go very high the first time). Once despair is in the picture, hope is also.