Liam

It was 2010. I was fifteen, and just barely out of sight was my driver’s license, a cell phone with Internet on it, and a body that puberty would soon be done with. I was in the suburbs, but only technically. I was being seduced by holograms from New York and LA and London. It was around then that I heard the first whispers of a group of boys who called themselves One Direction. And unlike the singers who came before them, these boys were actually kind of close to my age, the youngest, a boy named Harry, only a year older than me. And I liked that. I felt like I had a chance. A chance at making out with one of them, maybe. But more than that. A chance at literally anything for once. Kids my age weren’t just observing the world of adults anymore. They were in the game now. And if they were in it, what if I was too?

They seemed to escape all the usual indignities of youth. They seemed never to get in their own way, never to feel embarrassed, never to hear the word “no,” not from girls, and certainly not from adults. Their occasional mistakes, liking porn on Twitter or getting caught smoking weed by the Daily Mail, only made them sexier. It was total hypnosis. It's so obvious to me now how little I stood a chance.

I learned about the death of Liam Payne through a text from my friend, JP, who knew I loved the band. It wasn’t confirmed in American news yet, but Argentinians on Twitter had already started to talk about it. I was so sure that it wasn’t true. It was a rumor so insane I had the nerve to crack jokes. But then about ten minutes later, TMZ confirmed the news by publishing a photo of his body. “you have to write about it no?” JP texted me. “what do i say,” I replied, genuinely thinking he would give me an answer. All he wrote back was, “Lmao tru.”

I had a friend break-up that summer, and the people I thought to text first when I heard the news about Liam were not in my life anymore. But we used to talk about the band every single day. We would sing their songs in cars. We would sit on each other’s beds and discuss at length what we thought each of the guys was like during sex. We would sneak into pits with nothing but audacity and photoshopped tickets, and when people would ask if we were ever afraid we’d get caught, we would just shrug and say no, even though the threat of getting caught was obviously half the thrill. We built a private world where it was only me and them and the musicians we loved, and we were all kings. It was the best. And then it was over. 

We all use gods to make sense of our lives, so of course, I think of the public digs Harry made at Zayn after he left the band, and I think about the fight Louis and Zayn had on Twitter in front of everyone, and I wonder if that’s how any of my old friends talk about me. I wonder if the boys will ever address those comments now that it’s been years, and one of their brothers has died.

In 2015, over a span of six months, my dad died, my boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer, and my childhood best friend’s mom survived a very serious gunshot wound. Also in 2015: Zayn left the band, and later One Direction announced their breakup. Everything was indicating the same thing. Graduation day had come, and it was time to grow up.

On the last day of Thanksgiving break that year, I woke up in my childhood bedroom to a notification that Liam tweeted. “It's mad sometimes how life can feel like practice but you forget it's real thing and everything u do actually happens.” This tweet, which was probably written under the spell of weed or alcohol, totally rocked me. I was twenty and stunned to realize that, in fact, my days are not rehearsal for something more real than this. 

One Direction saw me through becoming myself. Through my teenage attempts at partying and sneaking out. Through losing my dad in the final hour of my teenhood. Through moving to New York City. And through the slow and grueling education of my twenties that life is precious, that hating yourself gets old, that you are more ready for things than you think, that you never stop figuring it out, but that along the way you actually do figure some things out. And through losing my friends and falling apart again and forgetting all of those things anyway.

In August, I had tweeted a joke about saving up for a 1D reunion tour instead of a house. I look at it next to its time stamp, and I crave the innocence of not possibly having known. I imagine a future self wishing to be naive of all the things I don’t know in the present. And I almost want to brace myself, but enough has happened for me to know better. Reunion is now a word that is cloaked in black lace. Maybe I was too immature to realize it always was.

And I can hear myself sound childish, but I guess I just hoped that this one thing I loved when I was young could stay uncomplicated. I wanted One Direction to be the playground by my house, a family dog that hears my keys when I’m back for the holidays and knows it’s me. I had held onto this feeling that maybe when the chaos of my life slows down and the dust settles, that life could go back to being simple, like it was when I was young. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming—the writing was always on the wall—it doesn’t become simple. It only becomes different. They’re not the same boys on that beach in Malibu, and I’m not the same girl watching.