The Brentwood Chick-fil-A has never seen me in a worse state than when I heard the news. Picture this: a 21-year-old former director letting out the loudest gasp she could muster and slamming her phone on the table after seeing the first post on her Instagram timeline, a post informing that former One Direction member Liam Payne has passed away at the age of 31 in Buenos Aires.
This news not only hurt my present self but also my younger self. The little girl who brought her 1D purse everywhere she went, the little girl who was ecstatic to learn that she shared a birthday with Harry Styles, the girl who cried when her grandmother gifted her an “Up All Night” CD. I, like many others, developed a parasocial relationship with each member.
Even after the band split up and the members went their separate ways, I kept up with every member. This emotional connection that I had with the boys and their music is what made it so difficult to comprehend that Payne passed away. It felt like a piece of my childhood, my internal fangirl, was lost.
However, as one grieves the person they spent their childhood idolizing, it’s important to remember someone holistically. Payne grappled with substance use issues and addiction during the time spent with One Direction and after the band split. He also faced abuse allegations from his ex-fiance and the mother of his child. With the circumstances surrounding his death and the questions about his mental state before the incident, it’s all a little too much and too complicated to handle.
As both the members of One Direction and I grew up, I learned more about myself and formed more opinions regarding the decisions and actions of each member, rather than seeing them as one untouchable entity. Altering the parasocial relationship that I formed when I was a child was difficult to overcome because it’s hard to reconcile one’s loving perception of a celebrity with their real-life mistakes. We tend to place celebrities and public figures on a pedestal, idolizing the picture of the person, instead of the person behind the camera.
With this complication, navigating the grief process with Payne’s passing has been a struggle. We want to grieve the person we knew when we were younger, not the gross behavior they exhibited when we grew up. I write to you HerCampus readers not to condemn Liam Payne for his actions, for I am not qualified to, and as readers, you can form your own opinion on the late pop star, I am writing to say it is normal to mourn and experience disdain for his actions at the same time.
It’s okay to reflect and feel sad about the memories tied to Payne and the band from your childhood, and it’s also okay to keep yourself at a distance to allow yourself to experience your grief fully.
As I write this article, watching old One Direction interviews and trying to reconnect with my younger self, I am realizing and accepting that the grief that I expected to have is not the feeling that I am currently going through. My younger self mourns the loss of the boy we fell in love with, but my current self aches for the man we grew apart from, the man who failed us as we got older. The hardest part is that we wanted him to be better and he wasn’t able to.
At the root of it, the death of Payne is an extremely sad story. His parents lost their son, the members of One Direction lost a brother and we lost a crucial part of our upbringing. Untimely death is never easy to stomach.
Here’s to our childhood and the beautiful memories we created together. I wish my mourning wasn’t so gray, but I am leaning into the in-between. I mourn the idol from my childhood while keeping room for accountability.