One Direction was their childhood. Now, fans are grieving their youth

(CNN) — Mikaela Dee spent much of her childhood in a hospital bed.

Dee was chronically ill, in and out of the hospital so much that her family elected to homeschool her. Her friends were distant; most of her interactions were with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and her parents.

When she was 15, though, she found One Direction on “The X-Factor UK” – five floppy-haired, skinny teenage boys around her age, singing together on her screen. Looking back now, the members of One Direction seemed funny and kind, Dee said; their zest for life inspired her. She made a fan account for the band on Instagram, and became friends with fellow fans across the country, even traveling to meet them in person. Suddenly, thanks to the band, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

Having gone on indefinite hiatus in 2016, the members of One Direction haven’t performed together in nearly a decade and their millions of young admirers have since grown up. But when Dee, now 29, found out that Liam Payne had died last week in a fall from a hotel balcony in Argentina, she suddenly “felt the walls close in.”

“(Payne was) a light in my life when I needed it most,” she said.

The group’s grounding center in their early years, Payne’s unexpected death at 31 has left many who grew up with the boy band shaken.

Joe Azar, 28, has been a fan of the group since he was 14. He runs 1D Alert, an X account dedicated to One Direction news and updates with over 300,000 followers. To Azar, and so many others, the band provided an escape from depression and bullying.

“They were my happiness, my safe place, my world for almost five years of my life,” he told CNN. “It feels like my younger heart was pulled out of my body, stepped on, and thrown on the floor.”

Affectionately known as Directioners, fans of the group were notorious. One broke into Payne’s hotel room and stole his underwear in 2013. (He wrote of the incident: “Strangest way I’ve ever been woken up, When ur in bed butt naked an sum1 is trying to force open your balcony) The year before, just to catch a glimpse of the boys, some Directioners hacked into an airport’s CCTV. One fan even tried to raise money to buy the band during management disputes – the GoFundMe raised over $1,500.

Even now, One Direction’s supporters are credited with building “the internet as we know it,” having created much of the culture that has defined life online in the 2010s. And for Directioners, that meant much of their fandom existed virtually. Like Dee, many connected over social media accounts on X, Instagram or Tumblr, creating an internet community that became like a family.

Payne’s death, for some, feels like a complete end to that collective journey. When Zayn left to pursue a solo career in 2015, when the band went on hiatus the next year – it never felt totally final, Dee said.

“It was always open ended that ‘Oh, one day they’ll come back for a reunion.’ Except now,” Dee said. “One member will never be a part of it.”

When beloved celebrities die, the grief fans experience can be intense. Despite not knowing a celebrity personally, they often take on a sacred status among their following – making their deaths particularly shattering. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, for example, an estimated 100,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park to mourn. Thirty years later, many could still recall where they were when they heard the news – one person remembers their step-father, upon hearing the announcement on the car radio, pulling over to sob.

While many gathered to mourn Payne over the weekend in cities around the world, seemingly even more gathered virtually to grieve. In the years since the band’s hiatus, many people trickled away from their fandom social media accounts. Last Wednesday, some logged back in to post tributes or reconnect with old Directioner friends. Prior to Payne’s death, Azar’s account had been on hiatus for years. Itsonedirection, another popular fan account on Instagram, hadn’t posted since 2018. Other fans, now adults, have reported getting messages from childhood friends and classmates about Payne’s death.

Rafy Evans, 27, hosted a meet-up at a Los Angeles restaurant Friday night for grieving Directioners, a way to bring together people who had met because of their mutual love for the band. Roughly 40 people came out and, amidst One Direction coasters and stickers, they lingered past midnight reminiscing.

“The first question for everyone was not ‘What’s your name?’” Evans told CNN “It was, ‘How are you feeling?’”

Maya Minich, 28, also became interested in the band at the ripe age of 14. Looking back now, Minich says, those years were such a moldable time, and One Direction wasn’t just a band she liked. They were her friends. When Payne’s death was announced, she started crying in her car. In the minutes after the news broke, more than a dozen people – some from high school, others she met through internet connections – had reached out to check in.

On one hand, Minich said, she’s an adult now, mourning the death of a person, in the way anyone might. But on the other, there’s her childhood self, the one who used to ride her bike to CVS to buy the new J14 Magazine with the One Direction posters inside; whose every brain cell outside of school and some sports went to the band.

“It’s childhood Maya that’s mourning really hard,” she said. “That’s 14, 15, 16-year-old Maya, who’s still in 28-year-old Maya’s soul.”

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