I can’t stop thinking about it. Strobe lights from laptop screens, cheering under the blanket, spending entire piggy-banks on new posters. The relics of my teenagehood, an inheritance from memory past. I had rarely thought of one of them dying, mostly because few things had ever seemed as alive in my life as them. But in the rare moments I did, I imagined myself at sixty, sitting down for breakfast, reading the news on my phone. There would be a little pang, a tiny cry from my twelve year old self, devastated at having to say goodbye. Because by sixty, even though I would not be better at grief, I would have lived enough lifetimes away from One Direction that it would not cut me down to the bone.
I am twenty-three. Sat in my childhood bedroom, in the very corner where I first kept my merch of the boys. If I stretch my fingers far enough into the past, I can almost still graze the faded posters, spread out on my bed, waiting for me to carefully plan how to exhibit them best. The 1D cup I received on my fourteenth birthday is still sat there, on the very shelf I first placed it. I feel transported in time, body possessed yet again by the soul of my teenage self. Insecure, seeking, always shyly peeking from behind the doors into rooms she didn’t feel cool enough to enter.
One Direction was one of the only rooms I felt cool enough to enter, because all of us in that room were anything but cool. Too obsessed, too hysterical, too boyband-feverish. At a time when my classmates were finding (& inventing!) new ways to explore the world, my life was housed in my bedroom, revolving around fan wars and Hollywood gossip. Fandoms might be the shiny new kid on the block for the cool enterprise today, but for those of us who’ve been here long enough – we know where we stood. & yet, in this cult of uncool, I found some of my most foundational friendships. People who taught me to be passionate, pushed me to be loud, encouraging me to embrace everything I love exactly as I wanted to love it. This magazine, my career, my outlook on life – there has been little that wasn’t shaped in these first fires of stan circles.
I have spent more than half my entire years in love with this band. A forever-open parenthesis, dribbling into every nook of my real-adult experiences. Which is perhaps why, I do not know how to articulate this grief. Too heavy to carry, too important to put down…what is there to even say about a loss that guts your entire childhood? Every emblem of my nostalgia is now a little burnt at the edges. It is not just the fact of Liam’s death that hurts, it is the circumstances. There can be no mourning removed from the reality of his abusive behavior. For the longest time, he was not the guy I had been so deeply fond of. & even before then, he was never a particular favourite. But he was, still, an integral part of a childhood-defining phenomenon. A memory I could pull out from the music case, dust off, plug into my iPod, and float away. During the pandemic, I, like many fellow fans, had turned back time to fall into being a Quarantine Directioner. Listening to Walls on loop, re-listening to the entire Icarus Falls, watching Heartbreak Weather’s music videos, making myself cry over History, over & over again. & at the top of that list was Liam, with his LP shows, frequent tweets, online-live birthday bash. At a time when the world had come to a standstill, he was still a part of the five boys who made it turn.
This bond and this fandom was uncomplicated for me. Close enough to define me, but far enough to never touch me. It is only as a fan today that I hesitantly ask about the roles I play in this fame-crunching, attention-hungry machinery that warps so many normal people into strangers. (& here is the parasocial punch – as if he wasn’t always a stranger.)
In life at sixty, I had imagined having a box of polaroids. Frozen moments of when me & my friends would, finally, be lucky enough to be at a 1D concert. & not just the made in the am quartet, but the OT5. The real 1D, with every single mismatched piece intact. This, then, is not the quiet turn of the lock upon the hopes of a reunion, but the door slamming onto the room that housed all our hopes for a reconciliation. Here was the concert hall, lit by a million phones, spotlighting those five men on stage. Happier, lighter. As ever in tune with one another & yet, much more at peace with each other & the world, than they ever got the chance to be.
That’s gone.
Anushka Bidani is the writer of the column a.m., a space that sings on the tightrope between One Direction’s & their solo creations.