shiso,
This has been a particularly difficult time for you. If I remember right, you have found yourself fairly recently in the CFS tsunami and while being sick a long time also sucks

there is a feeling sometimes of at least knowing what we're dealing with when we've been in it a while. Your grief may be pretty fresh, your old life is not that long ago.
The ups and downs seem to be inevitable. I had a few years of mostly pessimistic defeat that wouldn't seem to go away, and that is a terrible way to live. Hope would be important even if it didn't help anything change. If all it does is keep the sense of utter futility at bay, it is doing something valuable.
But I think that grabbing onto the rope of hope for a better future changes more than a black mood. I don't know how or why, I just know that's been my experience. Once I began to dare to hope again -- to force myself to hope against my own will and impulses and ... beliefs -- verrrrry slowly things did begin to change ... just a little. And then a little. Don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish here. Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say.:Retro smile: