#not me waking up and immediately making this emo ass post lmfaoooo

[pop-punklouis]

the way the boys have slowly talked more and more about the one direction experience with more honest flares proves to be incredibly fascinating to me. you all know how intriguing the boyband machine has always been to me. so to see parts of that inner dynamic and the arc of that dynamic shift as they grew from normal teenagers to fleshed out young adults with their own interests and friends and goals and purpose etc. is not very unfamiliar with how friendships work as a whole as you get older. they were such wide-eyed teenagers struck with this pop cultural zeitgeist that sucked them up so feverishly as their fame skyrocketed that all they had was each other. they didn’t know anyone else and no one else knew what they were going through. as they grew older and fame wasn’t as fresh, they started becoming their own people who had unique influences and friend circles and hobbies that not only gave them dimension as a group but also separated them from the group in an environment where it’s so hard to lose yourself to being one instead of finding your own footing as an individual. it gave them healthy breathers between work and breaks, and i think as much as we love their dynamic together and their is always genuine love and friendship there, if they continued to only be stuck with each other like they were in the early days, they would’ve came out of the band absolutely hating each other instead of finding peace and comfort with this open-ended break. and ultimately, that’s the best case scenario to watch each other grow up as people. as friends. as kindred spirits. and encourage that even if splitting and going your separate ways means it’s an end of an era and you all won’t be the same as you were together. it’s not really outgrowing friendships it’s just knowing these people were significant in being the vessel to help you become your own person and you’ll always be made up of pieces of them.

regardless of how often they talk or how much the band felt like work near the end and a coworker dynamic overtook some of that space— creating a certain environment like louis touched on, there’s something to be said about clarity and honesty that i think they all have within one another to know it was time to go on especially after zayn’s departure instead of running themselves into the ground and tainting friendships and community that mean so so much to them and will always sit there between their chests. it’s never a goodbye with friends and bonds like that. no one will ever, ever be able to understand their coming of age story like the other four. there’s still such love there, but people are people and life happens to us all. i’d much rather them be where they are now than being locked into something where they end up tearing down the happy moments they found within each other back then through the dark times of the fame machine. so i think no matter what else happened on the surface. they’ve all come to a place where they can say it isn’t goodbye. it’s a see ya later. and with what they all went through, that’s the best case scenario to preserve their love for one another and the band as a whole.