It is clear that with time, most people can and do psychologically recover from even devastating losses, like the death of a spouse; but reactions to the same blow vary widely, and no one can reliably predict who will move on quickly and who will lapse into longer-term despair.
In most places around the country, high school is no longer the pit of despair for gay students that it was when I attended.
In his sonnets, Shakespeare may proceed in solemn iambic regularity, creating an effect of measured progression through time and its legacy of suffering and despair: No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled….
For those inveterate sufferers in the stands there was frustration, disappointment and a sense of bleak Soviet-era melancholy; but what were the other 87? Fast-forward 11 years and while that mindset often still prevails, the basis for despair no longer exists.
I was no longer drowning dangerously in despair.
No longer will your pup despair that he doesn't have some wine of his own.
Each instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has become longer - to the critics' despair but to the delight of the audience.
He began racing from side to side and charging the net, no longer consulting his shoelaces in despair.
Now that we are there, our problem is no longer hope and illusion but despair and disillusion.
For two years in a row, the Jets have made the daring decision to get a franchise quarterback, although Sanchez, part of the biggest draft-day trade in the team's history, will cause delight or despair for far longer than last year's Brett Favre dalliance did.
