mourning our teenhood

Hey friends! Welcome back to another Sunday Spiral, a series where every week we dive into a topic to spiral about. We gotta get those scaries out before we start the new week! 

This week, we are going to be talking about the loss of Liam Payne. 

We are all in literal pain over it. 

I have talked about this on Youtube already, but I wanted to talk about it here as well. I filmed an entire video dedicated to mourning too, so make sure to check it out. It’s been nice to connect with other people going through the same thing. My channel is lifewithjordanleo.

On Wednesday, November 20th, Liam was put to rest. I know we are all mourning and dealing with it in our own ways. 

I am dealing with it by reaching out to the Directioner community. I’ve made a Youtube video dedicated to mourning Liam, and now I am writing about it because it is easy to feel alone in this grief, but we don’t have to. 

The sadness behind Liam’s death is multidimensional. On a simple level, he was a human with his own set of family and friends. He is leaving behind a child, which is devastating for Bear to grow up without his father.  I cannot imagine what they are all going through. He did not deserve to die so horrifically, so young. 

Like many of you I'm sure, I saw the photos from Liam’s funeral. Hence, why I felt called to write about Liam this week. 

I immediately got a giant pit in my stomach when I saw those photos. We shouldn't have been able to see those moments. They were so private. Seeing the boys together was beyond heartbreaking. They looked so broken and devastated. Being able to see them mourning was never an image I wanted in my head. I wish I could hug them. 

I think we all can agree that we thought we wouldn't have to deal with these feelings until we were a lot older. We thought we would be in our 70’s and 80’s with our children or grandchildren breaking the news to us. We never imagined being in our 20’s and 30’s and a member of our favorite boy band passing away. 

This is an event that we will never forget where we were when it happened. I was visiting a friend in Kansas city, I had just got in the car and was checking Instagram. It was the first thing I saw and I immediately went to Google to confirm it. I felt a pit in my stomach, but I honestly wasn't immediately devastated. It just didn't feel real. 

Once I was home from my friends, and I got on my phone to scroll Tik Tok, that's when it started to hit me. Seeing all of the old video diaries and clips of the boys, it hit me that that era truly was over and it is over forever now. 

I stayed in a dark room for 2 whole days, just sobbing. It felt dumb to feel this way about a celebrity I've never met, but I did. I still am feeling it, I have tears in my eyes just writing this! Damn! 

I think a lot of us were feeling complicated emotions in the following days after his passing. We were already mourning Liam after people had come forward about him a few weeks prior. On one hand, we all had just found out things about Liam that were not great, and on the other, he was the heart and soul of our teenhood. No matter who he really was, he was a massive part of our youth. 

I do choose to believe victims and I believe Maya Henry. I don't agree with people sending her hate. I imagine she is really struggling at this moment as well.  I am holding space for contradicting emotions.

I had already started mourning Liam before he passed, as I realized he was no longer the same man I thought he was while growing up. It made me realize how parasocial our relationship was. I don't actually know these boys personally, despite feeling like they are five of the most important influences in my life. 

Liam needed help though. Those boys went through so much in those five years together. I wish things were different for all of them. I hope they are really holding each other tight through this loss. My heart just hurts so badly for them.  

Losing Liam signified so much more to me than just another celebrity dying. He signified the loss of our teenhood, and the inability to regress back to a comfort era. 

It felt like a light was immediately burnt out. It felt like in Inside Out when Riley’s core islands were falling apart. It felt like the boyband island lost its sparkle. Liam was the heart of One Direction. 

I know I am not alone in saying middle school was not the best time of our lives, but there is something to be said about the peak One Direction era. We were running Twitter, we didn't even know who Elon Musk was! We were consuming so much One Direction media, creating our own, reading J-14 magazines and hanging all the posters on our walls. You can’t beat it, and you can't replicate it again. I crave this era of life. It was simple and fun. 

Like a lot of people, when the boys took their hiatus, I stopped listening to them for a while. I felt like maybe it was really just a phase and it wasn't something I should admit to listening to still. People were so mean about liking them! They felt like a childish part of me that I needed to neglect in order to fit in. 

When Covid hit, I was really depressed and moved back in with my parents for five months, so I started listening to them regularly again. I loved being able to regress back to a simpler time to help me cope with the anxieties of the present. 

For the last 4 years, I have been listening to the boys practically everyday. I bought new One Direction t-shirts, brought out all my old figurines, and even hung up one of my old calendars. It felt amazing to have them in my life again in my 20’s. I listened to their solo music too and I just felt connected with the boys again. It was different, but they were still the ones who helped get me through life. I was growing and aging, but still had my childhood interests in my heart. I

Unfortunately,  regressing back to that era doesn’t feel the same anymore. We were hit with the reality of life. The fact that anyone can die, at any time. We are all actually getting older and we can’t go back to that time. I am a teenage girl in my 20’s , but I am actually closer to 30. We are not in control and things happen that we don’t plan for. We all wanted a One Direction reunion so bad and it will never happen in the way we dreamed. 

I had just turned 26 a week before Liam’s passing and I was already feeling old. I was just kicked off my parent’s health insurance and in a foreign country wondering where life was going to take me next. I was barely starting to grapple with the idea of getting older. Watching back all the boys' funniest moments knowing they have aged and grown in the same way that I have all these years. 

Not to be dramatic, but I have always said I can die happy once I see the boys on a reunion tour. I would have gone into debt in order to see that. It was top of my bucket list. I really hoped one day we would experience that. I feel so lucky that I actually got to see all five boys in concert, with 5SOS as the opener, it doesn't get more classic than that! It’s a core memory of mine.

Seeing the shots from the funeral made it feel so real. I hated seeing those pictures. 

I am finally able to listen to my old One Direction playlists in the car though. It’s not the same, but my grief and love will continue to support them. No matter what, they saved my life and are why I am the way that I am. 

As a Zayn girl, I am also a wreck because he just had his first concert last night and I'm sobbing over the concert videos coming out of that. He sang so beautifully and he is so strong for continuing this tour. His red microphone and tribute to Liam at the end was heartbreaking. I can't fathom the pain he is feeling. 

Liam dying has been a wake up call for me truthfully. I am getting older and there are life decisions that need to be made eventually. I’m not getting any younger and as much as I wish I could live in that era forever, it’s not reality. As I’ve aged, my relationship to the boys has evolved. I keep up with them, I still engage with their content, I am a part of the fandoms, and I still have such a huge part of my heart dedicated to them. 

It really does feel so dramatic, but it’s real. I can’t imagine who I would be had I not become a Directioner. The community piece has been beautiful. They just have been a blessing during every period of life. I was constantly excited because of them when I was a teen. Their solo music helped get me through many depressive eras in my 20’s. I even have a Fine Line tattoo. 

One direction was never a phase. Those boys will be with us forever. It is absolutely criminal that we will have to grieve 4 more times. I am fine if they outlive me, so I never have to go without the rest of them! 

I guess my point is, it’s not stupid or weird or fake that you are feeling this grief for Liam. We all have our own unique relationships with the boys. They are parasocial, but that doesn’t make them any less real. This mourning is real, but we are not alone in it. Community is so valuable and we are so lucky that we have such a big one. 

Grief is just love with nowhere to go, and we have so much love for Liam and One Direction. 

Anyways friends, that's all we have for this week. Thank you for reading and spiraling with me this Sunday. I will talk with you all next Sunday. Remember to live a life that charges your soul. 

With love, 

Jordan