If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult at best and all but unlivable at worst or possibly even unlivable do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility then it's a lie.
I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another.