On Wednesday, October 16, the first thing I saw when I opened Instagram was a friend’s story reposting that Liam Payne had died. I didn’t believe it at first. I ran to Google, and though the search confirmed it, I was still at a loss, refusing to believe what I was seeing. It wasn’t until I saw the posts in remembrance from his former bandmates Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Niall Horan, that the news fully processed.
In my 20 years of life, I’ve grieved many personal losses and it’s a startling process every time. Grief is a part of human life, but it’s odd, grieving someone you never really knew. You go about your daily life, going to work and doing your assignments and amidst all of it, you find yourself randomly breaking down in tears over a person you never met. People around you are telling you, “Oh, you’re being dramatic, he’s just another celebrity.” But how do you explain that, no, he’s not?
One Direction was a formative experience when I was a kid. Like millions of others, they shaped my childhood in a way I can never forget. I remember forcing my little brother to watch all their music videos, watching random compilations on Youtube after coming home from school, and dreaming about the day I would get to go to one of their concerts. I had—and to my surprise in the last few days, still have— most of their songs memorized by heart. Those five boys were everything to my younger self. When the news about Payne’s passing broke, I became again that 10-year-old girl sitting at the dining room table, starry eyed and singing her heart out to “Story of My Life” and “Steal My Girl.”
It’s hard to put into words the exact feeling of losing such an integral part of my childhood. And I know there are millions of people across the globe dealing with the same feeling. My social media—whether it be TikTok or Instagram—has been a never ending stream of people mourning Payne’s passing and the true end of One Direction. It’s a matter of saying goodbye to a person who we grew up with, who’s vocals soundtracked so much of our lives. I never thought the day would come where I would be trying to figure out how to say goodbye to a member of the band, muchless at such a young age.
I won’t claim to know who Liam was as a person and I firmly believe every person has to be held accountable for their actions. There were things coming out about him in the media prior to his death that were shocking to learn and add a complicated layer to the grieving process. In my eyes the truths of this situation are: we never truly know a celebrity, bullying is never the answer, and every person deserves to receive help when they’re struggling. I don’t know what Liam’s private life looked like, and, honestly, I don’t want to know. Whatever the circumstances of his death may have been, it feels impossible to say goodbye to the version of him that shaped such a big part of my childhood and whom I idolized in my youth.
To any Directioners who are feeling hopelessly lost in navigating their feelings around this loss, I want to say that, even if there are people who find it ridiculous, your feelings are valid. This marks not only the loss of a human life, a devastating event as it is, but also the true ending of one of the most influential experiences in many of our childhoods. To quote “Walking in the Wind,” “we had some good times didn’t we…goodbyes are bittersweet.”