despair
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 173.
I no longer plumb the depths of despair. My sadness has become a springboard. In the past I used to think that I would always be sad, but now I know that those moments too are part of life’s ebb and flow and that all is well. This is a sign of confidence, of very great confidence, even in myself. I have gradually come to realize that I am going to manage my life properly.
Diary entry dated January 11, 1942, in Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life, the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork (New York: Picador, 1996), 83.