Ashley
Louis Tomlinson posted a tweet to the fandom today, a simple 140 characters composed of nothing but thank you, little does he (and the rest of One Direction) know, that we’re the ones who are thanking them.
One Direction has officially been together for five years; five wonderful, amazing, sometimes traumatic years. The fans have been supportive for five years, watching Harry, Niall, Louis, Zayn, and Liam go from single hopefuls on the x-factor to a boy band thrown together. Five young men who took on the world to a now four piece that we just love and want to protect. It’s been a roller coaster, its been a marathon, but it’s been beautiful nonetheless.
One Direction has brought many of us self love and respect, the boys have inspired us to see the best in ourselves and embrace it, to see the worst in ourselves and love that too because with their lyrics, their fan encounters, their tweets, and their hearts…they’ve told us in a hundred different ways that we are all unique and that we deserve to be loved. We’ve been exposed to five boys for almost five years who taught us no matter what, to love ourselves first and then to spread that love around to everyone and I think that’s the most important and somehow overlooked lesson that we’ve been given by them. They have spread a message to young people, teenagers, adolescents, and even adults and that message has been that as long as you believe in yourself, anything is possible. How amazing is it that our idols have been able to teach us that? It’s incredible.
So to the boys from the fans; you say thank you to us a lot, but we’re the ones with thankful hearts, warm spirits, and a very unique sort of confidence that we could have only been given through you. It’s been incredible feeling like we’ve grown to know you over the last five years, watching you grow into the young men that you’ve become. It’s been incredible to stay up all night anticipating new music, tweeting to you about things going on in our own lives and seeing you respond, finding our own best friends because of a mutual love for you. It’s been a heck of a ride, spending five years with you, but I don’t think a single one of us would have done anything differently. I dare say I know we’d do it all the same because there are some of us who literally wouldn’t still be here without you.
Thank you Harry, Louis, Liam, and Niall for staying. Thank you for fighting against hate, rumors, and people who didn’t understand you, just so that you could stay strong for us. Thank you for knowing your own worth and value so that you could teach a fandom how to know and recognize the same things within themselves. Thank you for producing music we listen to in the car at insanely loud decibels while we sing and dance with our friends. Thank you for creating a safe haven where people could come together, the outcasts, the ones who felt like they didn’t have a spot anywhere else; and find solace within one another, bonding over you.
Thank you for giving up the most valuable years of growing and finding yourselves in a regular environment for us, thank you for years of touring and releasing albums, thank you for charity matches and events, for meet and greets and catching flights in the middle of the night just to make it to the next city tomorrow. Thank you for giving up normalcy to chase your dreams because that decision gave us a home, we’ve found comfort in you, in the place this fandom has provided for us.
Thank you for five years, and we only hope to get to spend five more with you.
You are incredible, we are truly thankful. We support you till the end.
I know the subject is sensitive, but to Zayn, who was part of the band for four years, thank you as well. Thanks for staying as long as you could, for trying when it felt like you couldn’t and for leaving when it got to be too much. We may not understand but we appreciate all the things you helped give us too, we appreciate the memories, and we’ll always miss your high note in Rock Me.
To use a quote from yourselves, I think I speak for the fandom entirely when I say:
“You’ll never love yourselves half as much as we love you.”
