Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Continuing without hope is being offered as a real option rather than a contradiction, and for anybody who has lived through a long dark stretch that is an unusually honest thing to hear. The suggestion is not to feel better first. It is that the work can go on while the feeling is still terrible, and that going on is sometimes what eventually shifts it.

If you are in that place now, keep the tasks small and ordinary. Make the bed, answer one message, get outside for ten minutes. And if the darkness runs deep or long, this is the point to involve a doctor, a helpline or someone you trust, which is not giving up but a different kind of continuing.