It’s September 7, 2018. She’s sitting in her college apartment, alternating between the history paper she’s supposed to be writing and her much more entertaining Instagram feed. Very little is being written. Her phone dings as she receives the notification that says, “Liam Payne just posted a photo.” This man has just posted a photo WITH a black and white filter, AND he had the audacity to caption it: “1000 days.”
Goodbye, history paper! You are not getting written today. She is all in her feels now.
Has it really been 1000 days? What happened to “18 months, and we’ll be back”? Will they ever perform Made In The A.M.? Do they have some secret 1D group message where they discuss these things? Or does one of them have an Android? It’s Liam that has the Android, isn’t it? A million thoughts race through her head.
So much has changed in the past 7 years. As she presses play on one of the very first video diaries and hours later finds herself watching their final performance, she realizes how much she has grown up too.
*cue the tears*
She was in middle school, when the curly hair, green eyes and undeniably adorable dimples of Harry Styles won her heart and changed everything. She grew up alongside the boyband that changed the world and shaped her life. Their music was there on good days and bad days. When friends came and went, they remained. When mean girls were inevitably mean, “the boys” were always reliably sweet. And when the pressure to have the perfect body and a flawless face of makeup began, comfort was found in the lyrics of “What Makes You Beautiful” and “Little Things.”
*Warning: this gif may cause emotional distress*
To you fellow Directioners who are still counting down to the most epic reunion of all time, we are with you. Congratulations, you have come a long way. If you’ve been here since the video diaries and those precious crooked teeth, or if you joined in somewhere along the timeline of jeans getting skinnier and hair getting longer, we at Her Campus UGA applaud you for your dedication. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve been through it all: babies, braces, breakups, Twitter fights, the man bun, 15 music videos dropped and over 150 awards won. You kept the “Best Song Ever” music video on repeat to beat the VEVO record, and you woke up extra early to watch every morning show performance. You know who their parents are, and you follow their siblings on social media. It’s called dedication, people.
So, keep holding onto hope. Maybe they won’t make us wait 1000 more days. It is after all a hiatus; you must not forget. But even if they remain on separate paths, traveling while another is touring, or appearing on television while another is in the studio, we still have what we’ve always had: the memories. One Direction was a defining part of millions of people’s childhood and adolescence. They will always be “the boys,” and we will never stop worrying about how they are doing and what they have been working on because the love of a fangirl knows no boundaries. They connected us all, and to have that go away was truly heartbreaking. But it was never meant to be a goodbye, just a see you soon.
Harry, Louis, Niall, and Liam, it is the duty as a member in this fandom to support you in all your future endeavors. We want nothing but the best for you. If that means going broke by buying individual albums, paying for separate merch and going to four concerts rather than one, we will do it. That’s what unconditional love is, and for better or for worse, we are devoted to you four goofballs. But do us a little favor and get back together already.
We miss you.
“You know what, I’d be just amazing to be remembered like even like as a mom turned to daughter, ‘The boy band at my time One Direction, they just had fun’, you know what I mean? ‘They were just, they’re just normal guys, but terrible, terrible dancers,” – Louis Tomlinson.
Don’t worry Louis, we promise to tell them.