Despair is a bad internal decision. In many cases. Not always.
Again and again you tried and hoped that this time it would be different, and again it did not work.
And you decided to despair.
I am not engaged here in blaming the victim. Well — slightly.
Despair is something you do. Despair is something you fuel.
And if that is so, it is the most optimistic fact in the world.
Because if you built the despair, you can also dismantle it.
You do not need to be connected to your true feelings. You need to understand the rules that feed the monster.
You understand, almost every mental state of yours is a film projected in your consciousness, telling you what ought to happen now and how you ought to feel.
And one dramatic day you will understand that you are the director.
And the moment you understand that, invert it. Starve the monster of despair.
A caveat, because the claim can be cruel if taken too far. Some despair is a proportionate response to genuinely terrible circumstances, and some is clinical and requires treatment rather than a change of perspective. I am not talking about either.
I am talking about the very common variety that arrived as a conclusion — a decision, made at some identifiable point, that this area of life is closed — and which has since been maintained by carefully not testing it.
That kind is reversible, and the test is simple. If you can name roughly when you gave up, it was a decision. And decisions can be revisited.