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After the recent tragedy, I haven’t really known what to do with myself. I get up, I flick to BBC News and check it’s still true, I go back to bed. I wake up, I check again, I have a little cry. I think of all the devastated souls who will likely be torn apart by this single horrific event, orchestrated by one man worn down by the world. I can’t even bring myself to stagger across my bedroom to the fridge and pour my standard journalists’ breakfast of whisky with a side of bitterness. It’s gone 5pm and I’m usually up before three.
I’m talking, of course, about Zayn Malik’s recent departure from One Direction, the singular greatest boyband of our time. What I love about One Direction isn’t the songs, obviously - although the wet dream euphemism of a song Night Changes and its accompanying video has gotten me through many a lonely wank - but the fan base that comes with it. Directioners are my absolute fave. They’re creative, they’re kooky, they’re good with their words. They’ve produced a line of T-shirts that say ‘ZAYN PLEASE’ on them, one of which I’ve ordered and fully intend to wear until I cross the line of socially acceptable hygiene again. And they’ve been busy tweeting the most heart-wrenching dedications to their fallen hero ever since the news broke (sometimes bordering on the Dickensian, as was the case with a tweet from the emotionally named @I_am_angri stating: ‘It was the best time of my life and now it’s the worst time.’)
I think it’s fair to say that there’s a little bit of a Directioner in all of us. Let he who has never had Harry Styles’ face etched across their forearm or threatened to break their chihuahua’s neck if a band doesn’t follow them on Twitter cast the first stone. Directioners take their role in life seriously, and they look out for one another, treading a careful line between dedication and compassion. One fan took an overdose because the members of 1D didn’t follow her: dedication. The rest of the Directioners who saw her stream managed to identify where she was and get an ambulance to her before it was too late: compassion. They make the whole ‘cut yourself for Bieber’ thing, when a horde of teen fans got into self-harm because Justin smoked a spliff, look totally passé. Not that it matters, because right now #BeliebersAreHereForDirectioners (it’s trending and everything.) Even those guys are here for those (us?) Directioners right now.
Some people in the media have failed to understand the dedication of Directioners, or misinterpreted it as dangerous insanity. Those people should be punished. Take one piece in the Independent, which collated a few supposedly OTT reactions to Malik’s departure, including one girl who memorably stated ‘I WANT TO SLAP SOMEONE DEAD’ on hearing the news. Totally understandable. Meanwhile, the Telegraph insensitively claimed that reactions such as ‘SOMEONE IN MY SCHOOL JUST SCREAMED ZAYN LEFT ONE DIRECTION AND SOMEONE SCREAMED NO AND I CAN HEAR CRYING’ and ‘A plane crashed that killed people what do I care? If zayn wasn’t in it then idgaf! Let me grief [sic] over him!’ were out of proportion.
The only real solace a hardcore Zayn fan has now is the widespread sharing of one classic piece of fan fiction, where the reader is instructed to imagine that she needs an urgent heart transplant and Zayn is there to kiss her good luck before she goes into theatre. After coming round from the operation, she asks the attending nurse where her boyfriend is - only to be told that Malik was, of course, the donor. All that’s left behind is a teddy and a note to say he loves her. Directioners know full well that Zayn loves them so much, he would readily let them rip his vital organs from his body. Because that's what real friends do.
Russell Brand was asked by Now magazine this morning what he thought of Zayn’s departure, and urged fans to remember ‘we’ve still got Harry, Liam, Niall and Louis, so let’s focus on what we’ve got’. But sometimes it’s just not that easy. Harry broke down on stage last night, and even Domino’s tweeted a picture of a pizza with pepperonis styled into a broken heart. Kleenex have claimed that they’re released a ‘Zayn size’ box of tissues, for that inevitable cyclical night of crying and masturbation. Capitalism is creaking on its rusty hinges under the weight of Zayn Pain. As @Marcio__Amaral says on the subject, ‘I cry, you cry. We all cry.’ But even if Zayn really has gone back to Perrie’s arms for good (Yoko Ono of 1D, anyone? Justsayin), we can comfort each other with the knowledge that Directioners will always have each other. We pulled together to send coordinated death threats to Taylor Swift all those months ago. We can pull together in this time of hardship again.
