One Direction is the reason I’m the writer I am today.
Sure I was writing stories and printing them to put in a display folder when I was 8, before one direction existed, but fanfiction has become everything to me. The first one I ever read was one direction, in 2013, and within a few months I’d started several one direction multi chaps.
I created Grace Williams in 2014, to share one direction fics in a safe space. Look at me now. The natural crossover got me into 5sos fics, and their fandom, then one direction was over. They lived within me longer than 2015, even if they barely have for the last few years now. The writer they sparked to life in 2013 will always live within me, and for that I must be thankful.
I’m not blind, I’d seen the spiral of Liam since the band ended. It’s not hard to connect how the one touted as the responsible leader of the group fell apart from the pressure of that label, and the lack of structure outside the group everyone told him to take care of. Many things in the past six ish years and have made me question so much about so many things, because, for those unaware, Liam was my favourite in the band. It went on to provide a lesson in parasocial relationships that wasn’t particularly fun, but many teenage girls go through.
One Direction gave me friends that far transcended the band, in time and commonality. It’s weird to think that there’s friends I made a decade or more ago, because of a little band I only ever saw live once, that I either still talk to or they—at the very least cross—my mind fondly and sporadically.
Liam was complicated, as was loving him, but that’s the humanity of it. A not small part of me was still processing, though not head on or particularly well, the horrific and indefensible allegations that surfaced in the last few weeks. It can be, and is, true that victims deserve compassion and that no one deserves to die so young. There’s almost grotesque parallels between the grief of his alleged victims, and that of his friends and family. No one will ever get the closure they truly deserve.
I am reminded of two things. First, the death of comedian Lenny Bruce and the way that was immediately exploited in ways similar to TMZ’s actions. It says so much about how society struggles to find humanity for the living, when some can’t even find humanity for the deceased. The second thing I’m reminded of is a funeral I went to, of man who passed at a similar age, and at the funeral his family found out he had had a girlfriend for the last almost two years. It says that we so often miss things in the lives of those closest to us, and also—I think—that we should love so openly. Love is not finite, but life is.
Lastly, on an ever so slightly lighter note, I’d like to once again suggest you all listen to (if you want to listen to some of his music) the First Time EP. First Time (the song) is meh but the rest of that EP is the strongest releases of his solo career. They have a vulnerability most of the rest of what he did after the band doesn’t, and easily display how this was the man instrumental in writing so much of One Direction’s discography. Liam and Louis’ writing was a perfect storm in the band.
The core of my feelings eludes me, feelings running away from coherent sentences to describe them, but that’s the humanity of grief and love.
–GW xo
