But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Despair does not always mean the wanting has stopped. Often it means the wanting is still fully alive and has had nothing to feed on for a long time, which is a sharper state than indifference. If you had truly given up, it would be quieter than this. The ache you are calling hopelessness may be the shape hope takes when it is starved, and that changes what might help.

Ask what the hope underneath is actually for, plainly, without judging whether you deserve it. Then find the smallest thing that would feed it even slightly this week, and do that one thing.