hope is a killer

hope is a killer.

full stop.

that sentence left my mouth without warning. i didn’t even think before i said it. no build up, no careful phrasing, no intention behind it. it just… came out. i was on the way home from manchester, back to my uni city, sitting opposite my best friend, talking about something i’ve been struggling with for a long time. and the moment i said it, i literally shocked myself.

hope is a killer.

i remember going quiet after. almost embarrassed. i even said to my best friend, ‘why did i just say that? where did that come from?’ i’ve always been someone who loves hope. i love things to look forward to. i love believing that things will work out. i love optimism. and most importantly, i love trusting Allah. and i love the idea that ease follows hardship. so hearing myself say something that sounded so anti-hope felt wrong. jarring. almost dangerous.

and yet… the more the words repeated in my head, the truer they began to feel. not universally. not for everyone. but for me, in that moment, in that situation.

this newsletter isn’t about dismissing hope altogether. islam encourages hope. our faith is built on hope: hope in Allah’s mercy, hope in His justice, hope in His wisdom, hope in akhirah. without hope, people stop praying, stop trying, stop turning back to Allah. i know that. i believe that.

but i’ve also come to realise something uncomfortable: hope, when it’s misplaced, prolonged, and detached from reality, can slowly destroy you from the inside.

for a long time, i was stuck in a cycle with someone. i didn’t recognise it as unhealthy at first. i told myself it was patience. loyalty. optimism. trust. i convinced myself that holding on was a virtue, that staying hopeful made me strong, that letting go would mean i lacked faith. the signs were there — clear as day — but i kept overriding them with hope. hope that things would shift. hope that something would click. hope that if i just stayed a little longer, tried a little harder, endured a little more, things would return to how they once felt.

and that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

hope can keep you waiting.

psychologically, hope is powerful because it gives meaning to suffering. when you believe pain has a payoff, you tolerate more of it. your brain starts justifying discomfort because it’s framed as temporary, necessary, or leading somewhere better. this is why people stay in situations that drain them. because hope convinces them the pain is an investment.

i wasn’t staying because the present felt good. it didn’t. i didn’t enjoy the conversations with this person anymore. i didn’t enjoy waiting. i didn’t enjoy the anxiety, the overthinking, the constant self-monitoring. i knew, in my body and my heart, that it wasn’t good for me in the moment. but i told myself it might be good for me later. that maybe this discomfort was the price of a better ending.

that’s where hope becomes dangerous.

there’s a tension we all live with: present pain vs future reward. and in healthy situations, that tension makes sense. you study hard now so you can graduate later. you train now so your body becomes stronger later. you sacrifice now because there’s a clear, realistic outcome ahead. your actions align with your values, and the pain has direction.

but sometimes, hope asks you to endure pain without evidence that it’s leading anywhere. it asks you to keep shrinking yourself today for a version of tomorrow that may never arrive. and the longer you stay in that space, the more your nervous system stays on edge. you become hyper-aware of every word you say, every action you take, every possible misstep, because you’re terrified that one wrong move will ruin the outcome you’re hoping for.

that was me.

i realised this fully during that same conversation with my friend. she asked me a simple question:

why are you so scared to let go?

and the answer came out just as honestly as the sentence that started this whole post.

‘because if i let go, i lose any chance of things changing’

saying it out loud made me pause. because that’s when it clicked. everything i was doing — all the waiting, all the enduring, all the self-abandonment — was driven by hope. not the kind of hope that motivates you to grow, but the kind that traps you in fear. hope that keeps you frozen because you’re more attached to a specific outcome than to your own peace.

she said something to me that i’ll probably carry for a long time:

do you really believe you need to hurt yourself to make something meant for you stay?

that question shattered something in me.

there’s a saying that if something is written for you, it will reach you even if it’s between two mountains. and if something is not written for you, it will not reach you even if it’s between your two lips.

that concept humbled me.

because i realised i had been living as though my suffering was the deciding factor. as though if i just behaved correctly, waited patiently enough, endured enough, i could force an outcome into existence. i wasn’t trusting Allah, i was trying to manage qadr.

and that’s another place where hope can turn into control.

true tawakkul doesn’t require you to destroy your inner peace. it doesn’t ask you to ignore your boundaries. it doesn’t demand that you tolerate emotional harm just to prove how much faith you have. trusting Allah means doing what is right in the present, even when the future is unclear. especially when the future is unclear.

and there are two kinds of hope.

there’s hope that draws you closer to Allah, closer to yourself, closer to growth. the kind that energises you. the kind that makes you excited to take action. the kind where your steps feel aligned, not forced. this hope expands you.

and then there’s hope that keeps you stuck. hope that makes you negotiate your worth. hope that asks you to stay in situations that chip away at your peace. even when everything in you is exhausted.

i lived in the second kind for too long.

a few days ago, something happened that finally broke the cycle for me. it hurt more than i expected. i cried for days, and with my PMDD, everything felt heavier. at the time, i described it as numbness. like something had gone quiet inside me.

but looking back now, i understand what that numbness really was.

it was the absence of false hope.

something in me finally accepted what i had been avoiding for years. not in a dramatic, empowering way. not with instant relief. but in a sort of painful surrender. and as strange as it sounds, that pain was freeing. because for the first time, i wasn’t waiting anymore.

this reminds me of something else deeply personal.

every year, i write myself a letter. i write it online, schedule it to be emailed to me on new year’s eve the following year, and then i read it back as a way to reflect on how much i’ve grown. but at the end of 2024, i also wrote in one of my journals — from the perspective of me at the end of 2025.

i don’t remember every word. but i remember the feeling. i wrote that 2025 had been the best year of my life. that i had let go. that i was no longer waiting. that i had moved on.

but when 2025 actually began, things didn’t unfold the way i imagined. that person reappeared. old emotions resurfaced. i thought it was a sign from Allah. now i understand it was a test.

recently, i told another friend of mine about the letter and journal entry. i broke down. i told her i felt like i’d failed. like 2024 me had so many hopes for 2025 me, and here i was, feeling stuck in the same emotional place. she asked me one question:

‘how do you feel now?’

i said, i’m done. i don’t want to wait anymore.

and she smiled and said,

‘God is so good — He protected you AND made you so much stronger throughout this process. you didn’t fail at all. in fact, you kept your promise. 2024 imaan would be so proud of you. I’M so proud of you.’

and it’s so true.

it didn’t happen the way i expected. it wasn’t clean. it wasn’t painless. and it definitely wasn’t smooth sailing. but it happened. Allah knew that ease for me didn’t look like distance. it looked like clarity. and clarity came through hurt.

hope didn’t disappear.

it transformed.

for a long time, my hope was attached to a specific outcome, a specific person, a specific version of how i thought my life needed to unfold. and without realising it, i made that hope my compass. every decision i made was filtered through it. every boundary i ignored was justified by it. every moment of inner discomfort was reframed as patience, as faith, as something noble.

but hope that requires you to betray yourself is not hope.

what i have now feels less dramatic. less consuming. my hope no longer asks me to endure pain in the present for a future that may never arrive. it no longer demands that i stay small, silent, or uncomfortable just to keep a possibility alive. instead, it rests in something steadier.

it rests in Allah.

it rests in the belief that what is meant for me will find me without costing me my peace. that what is written for me will not require me to overthink every word, calculate every move, or abandon my intuition. that if something is good for my dunya and my akhirah, it will come in a way that feels aligned, not anxiety-inducing.

letting go didn’t feel empowering at first. it felt like grief. it felt like disappointment. and in a way, it felt like my own sense of bereavement. mourning the loss of someone i know no longer exists feels like the collapse of a future i had rehearsed in my head for years. but after processing the grief, i know something else will appear.

relief.

because i won’t be waiting anymore.

and maybe that’s the real lesson i’m still learning — that letting go is not the absence of hope, but the return of it to where it belongs. not in people. not in outcomes. not in versions of the past we keep trying to resurrect.

but in Allah alone.

maybe hope isn’t always a killer.

but misplaced hope can quietly drain you of years, of energy, of peace.

and sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do is not to keep hoping, but to finally let go, trust Allah, and choose yourself in the present.

that kind of hope doesn’t kill you.

it brings you back to life.

love, imaan x

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