Hope

Some people talk about hope as a beautiful thing, something to cherish and hold on to.
I see hope as a opportunity to be let down.
In my experience, the more hopeful you are the harder it hits you when it doesn't work out the way you hoped. When you allow yourself to hope that someone will be different, that you can trust in them or a system, it hurts even more when you're proved wrong.
My childhood was spent believing you couldn't trust. My early adulthood was spent reinforcing that belief. The last two years I've been learning to challenge those beliefs and allowing myself to trust; allowing myself to hope people are better than I believe them to be.
Unfortunately it takes months, years even, to override a negative with a positive, and only seconds to revert back to where you began.
Letting someone down who struggles with abandonment issues, and/or with deep-rooted trust issues and a built-in self preservation model of self-relience at sometimes harmful costs, is giving them proof that they were right not to reach out in the first place. 
No, of course you didn't say that; but actions speak louder than words. Excuses are irrelevant because inconsistency is a dagger to my heart. Rationally, I know it isn't personal. Rationally I also know and understand most reasoning behind such things; after all I'm reasonably intelligent and, though admittedly I lack tact in most cases, I am rather empathetic towards other's plights.
Unfortunately, my irrational mind generally takes the wheel in these scenarios and a lot of painful and self-debasing thoughts and emotions rear their ugly heads. 
'It's my fault, they don't care about me and why would they? I'm a burden and I'm useless and stupid and... dare I think it? Am I better off dead?'
Of course whilst I'm thinking this my auditory hallucinations are in full swing, loving the freefall, using the dip in my near impenetrable stronghold to bully me into submission. 
Suddenly I'm now battling three foes instead of one, and I flip the override switch and mosey on down into dissociation-ville. Here I'm aware nothing is okay, but I'm so detached from it all I hardly care. Everything just feels hazy and heavy and a little alien. I know I have to go back but I just ride it out.
At least in that state I don't have to worry about hope. I gave up on that a long time before I got here.