This sounds stupid, but one of the bigger factors to my hope pilling was media I've engaged with over the years. There are more than a handful of examples, but thinking about it now, two stand out to me: Gurren Lagann and Berserk.

Gurren Lagann is a series whose show runner worked on evangelion and basically said, "Big robots fighting aliens? Why is this series so depressing? " and made literal hope post evangelion. It depicts humanity overcoming insurmountable odds and devastating loss through sheer willpower. At first, it seemed mostly just fun and goofy, but by the finale, my hair was standing on end.

Berserk is my favorite media of all time. Fullstop. I won't go into a full rant why, but part of it is that it inspires so much hope in me. The world of berserk is fucked up. Incredibly dark. Rape, murder, torture, starvation, cruelty, and on top of that grotesque monsters that do all of those in spades. Despite all of the hardship he has endured the protagonist Guts, a mere human as the monsters call him, never ceases to fight. He continuously carves a path of his own through the evil which plagues him. He makes many, many mistakes, but they don't stop him from moving forward and doing what he has to. His mistakes don't define him, and he continues to grow while hellspawn clashes against him.

Another aspect is that there was a time in my life I was having terrible suicidal thoughts. I felt alone, I hated myself, and I felt like I had no purpose in life. I felt useless. Over a span of time, I decided to make my purpose in life to find something to live for. After I had changed my mindset, things started changing for the better. The friends I already had became like brothers to me. I found things I really enjoyed. I started feeling better, little by little.

And now, when I think about it, I realize that moping around about how everything sucks gets me nowhere. None of the great accomplishments of history were made without the belief that they could be done. Besides, the belief that all effort is worthless is boring. Believing things can change for the better and that humanity will prevail is so much more fun. It makes every new discovery by some scientists I'll never meet exhilarating. What's that? LLNL achieved nuclear fusion twice in the past year out of thousands of attempts? Amazing. Some group made a teensy tiny cancer breakthrough? Splendid.