At the end of March 2015, Zayn, my favorite member, left the
band.
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| Headline (2015) |
Looking back, I understand the reasoning behind his decision and now I
could see the signs that he gave over the years, but in 2015 it felt like the
floor vanished under my feet. Something that consistently existed in my life
had been taken away from me. At first, I was in so much shock and therefore in
denial but after a couple of minutes an immense sadness overtook my body and
the first thing I did was contacting Keylie. I went on Twitter and just cried
my eyes out. It took me a lot of time, longer than I want to admit, to recover
from that unpleasant message.
My sadness turned into anger and my main source
of comfort was the Fandom. Everyone was feeling sad, angry, confused, hopeless
and somehow we were all comforting each other.
In the next couple of weeks,
there was a lot of chaos in my little fandom world and that translated into my
real life. I noticed, that whenever I felt happy in the Fandom, I was happy in
my real life. Whenever something negative happened in the Fandom, my analogous
life went downhill as well. But the band and the fandom managed to push through
that period and somehow it brought us all closer than ever. From this point on
we bonded over our love for the band, as well as the sadness it caused. My life
went on and I started to distance myself a bit from the fandom because I saw
how toxic it could be. But I still listened to their music, followed the
members and as Zayn released his songs, started to also listen to his work.