my five boyfriends

recently, i found myself getting misty-eyed in the car when a one direction song came on, which is a little embarrassing to admit—not based on principle, but because it was "where do broken hearts go." it'd be one thing if it was "spaces" or "long way down," even a cheesy ballad dripping with manufactured sentimentality like "moments," but despite its misleading title, wdbhg is an upbeat anthem more suitable for jumping around than blinking away tears. but it was the way their voices blended, how one line would start out dominant on harry's vocals but have undeniable zayn influence by the end, how i could hear niall stand out (a big deal for those of us who were crusading online for him and louis to get more solos after 2011's up all night). at present, with 3/5 of the members having three full length solo albums under their belts, i have more of their individual music saved on my spotify than stuff from the group, and i forget how commonplace it used to be to hear liam on one verse and harry on the next.

on more than one occasion, people have accused me of lying after i provided details of my one direction phase. it was more of an era, actually—spanning from when i was freshly eleven to after i turned sixteen. the effects of their perpetual hiatus caused it to fizzle into the low grade interest i possess now, where i keep up with the individual members to varying degrees but am nowhere near as interested as the days when i had their blood types and birth times memorized, however dubious that information may have been. i now regularly let july 23rd pass without a second thought, but i used to set an alarm on that day for 8:22 pm so i could fully bask in my appreciation that at that exact moment (time zones be damned) in 2010, the five of them were thrown together on the x factor and narrowly avoided elimination, thus affecting the course of my entire life. i've never been kidding when i say that for several years of my adolescence, i had no discernable personality outside of being obsessed with one direction.

people's disbelief is probably rooted in a touch of sexism, the variety of which tells us to disregard the legitimacy of young girls and the intensity of their emotions, but the fact of the matter is that most of the people who remain in my life wouldn't think to associate me with the group. while they take up a nonzero amount of my headspace, it doesn't come up in most conversations, and i have other interests that align more with my adult persona. still, niall, harry, zayn, louis, liam, and the four albums they released between 2011 and 2015 accompanied me through some of the worst moments of my life, helped me turn strangers into friends, and provided the basis for what i consider my greatest asset and a major aspect of my identity—my writing skills. (by some miracle, there's no trace of any of the numerous fanfictions i put online, which i will remain thankful for the rest of my life.)

i'm admittedly still chasing the high of shaky, blurry video clips from the latest show of tour hitting my tumblr dashboard, of seeing a paparazzi shot of one of the boys debuting a new haircut, of scouring the internet for a high definition recording of a leaked song. while in most respects, it's a good thing that as i’ve aged, i've learned to regulate my emotions—i'm not shutting down and ignoring my friends over perceived slights! i'm not freaking out over relatively minor inconveniences! i'm not having panic attacks on a biweekly basis!—it does scare me a little that i'm incapable of feeling as strongly about anything anymore. there are books and tv shows that have lit a smaller version of that fire in me, but it never lasts more than a few months, if that. maybe it's just a sign of my brain developing past the threshold where such blind devotion can thrive. nevertheless, i catch myself holding onto the expectation that one day, i'll return to that level of emotionality, and by extension, a world that made sense because it was small, contained, and functioned with rules i easily understood.

that's not to say i hold out hope for a reunion. even if it were a realistic idea—which with how disparate their solo success is, it's not—it would be disappointing no matter the format. the banter, coordinated outfits, and pigeonholed roles each member played would be gone, and with them, the magic. i can now see how teams of marketers and record label execs were able to pull the wool over my preteen eyes. i can now see that they did contain parts of their manufactured identities and still infinite more traits i'll never be privy to (a few years ago, my best friend and fellow former fangirl told me that when we were at the height of our obsession, her older brother reminded her that she had never seen them when they didn’t have a camera pointed at them, and i found the revelation devastating even as an adult).

even if i'm wrong and fans are one day treated to a live performance, recorded tv special, or even new music, i'm confident it wouldn't feel the same. my anecdotal evidence lies in the experience i recently had seeing big time rush in concert. i became a fan of the group and their tv show even earlier than one direction, and though my friends favored 1d, my devotion to btr was equivalent. the concert was a last minute excursion that ended up being a much better time than i anticipated, but it came with the baggage of the nearly ten years since they went on their own hiatus.

any celebrity’s image is subject to intense manipulation, but btr had the added pressure of a children's media corporation dictating their every move. they recently bought the rights to their discography and name and owe nothing to nickelodeon, but i've still sensed something inauthentic or maybe hesitant about their resurgence. i might just be disillusioned from the discovery that carlos (who it's worth mentioning is one of only two men of color included in this group of nine), supports harmful right wing media personalities and politicians. his views are his own and have no tangible effect on my life, but the night of the concert, even as i screamed the lyrics that have been stored many folders deep in the hard drive of my brain since i was nine years old, i couldn't fully disregard a feeling of betrayal lurking behind me on the venue's lawn.

the same would inevitably ring true during a hypothetical one direction reunion—all the things that have come from the five members since 2015 that reveal how imperfect and often painful their time in the band was behind the scenes would color the edges, plus the unique pain me and my fellow fans of color experienced after slights like the music video for “night changes” only including a white hand to represent the "fan's pov" on five unique dates with each member of the band, and of course, the leaked video of louis and zayn in the back of a car smoking weed and saying the n word (most fans at the time cared more about the weed).

i'm not interested in canceling them or applying a 2023 moral standard to actions that, like it or not, were more acceptable in the 2010s, but i'm also not interested in granting them unearned absolution. however complex my feelings about them as individuals and as a collective are, i'm now able to hold conflicting emotions about them without feeling like a traitor.

over the years, as i've reached and eventually surpassed the ages they were when they first breached my consciousness, it's so clear that the ethics around their formation are sketchy at best. they were high schoolers when they were thrown into a situation that they dreamt of but came with unfathomable strings attached. whatever futures they may have once been on track to live are so unattainable now that it feels like an exercise in futility to try and imagine it. still, i sometimes wonder how each of them would've turned out if not for the group; to do so is to wonder how i would've turned out without them.