Hi, my name is Channon, I’m nineteen and I have been a One Direction for “five years, four months, three weeks and some days” (or there abouts). And no, before you ask, I am absolutely not crazy!
During this time, which may I add counts towards a quarter of my life (oh geez), I have been to 12 concerts, tweeted 135,523 times and spent many hours in floods of tears over Harry Styles. Some people might say, oh what a waste of time, but I disagree as these past years have been the best and I wouldn’t replace them for the world.
If someone had asked me five years ago, at the age of nineteen and a half you will still be completely obsessed with this boyband, I would have laughed. Although, this is probably because I didn’t think that they would be as famous as they are!
Throughout my time at school I felt pressured to like a certain music genre, dress in a particular way and pretend that I had seen every single movie ever to be brought out. I often had to be someone that I wasn’t in order to be ‘liked’ – and I’ll be honest, I really don’t understand why I wasn’t just me! As in reality, I liked pop music, red tartan-shirts and watching Wild Child (over and over and over again). When I first made my One Direction twitter account in January 2011, people sniggered and made remarks. This lead to me not sharing it with many people as I was absolutely terrified about what people would think. I was just like every other 14-year-old girl at time, tweeting Harry 300 times a day telling him I loved him (although, this still happens all these years later and nothing much as changed since then, in fact, I’m probably more of a fangirl now than ever before).
Even at college I didn’t share my account with all my friends, instead people just found out about it. However, I now realise that I don’t really care what people think or what people say, as One Direction make me incredibly happy. I have been fortunate enough to be apart of an online community that built itself and it still manages to make me smile daily. As I have talked about before on here, One Direction mean far more to me than what most people assume. They symbolise hope, happiness and a tremendous amount of memories. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have made twitter, I wouldn’t have been able to experience many of the opportunities that I have and I definitely wouldn’t be the person that I am today. Throughout these past five years twitter has become something I couldn’t live without and it has enabled me to meet some of my lifelong friends. The One Direction family feels like a second home to me, one that exists on the internet but it is full of overwhelming kindness, support and love. I cannot imagine a world without them in my life. But that is okay, as it is what makes me, me.
I just wish I had realised sooner that it is okay to just #BeYou, love YOU and be happy in your shell. If something or someone makes you happy, then who cares? If you want to wear those bright yellow Dr.Martens then do so! If you want to listen to the charts then do so! If you want to spend all of your pocket money on concerts then do so! If you want to spend the whole weekend eating pizza and wearing pyjamas then do so! Because, honestly, you’ll regret if you don’t.
So once again, my name is Channon and I’m nineteen. I have a Disney Princess rucksack that I take to university every single day, I like to sing to Adele in the shower and spend all of my money on chasing One Direction around the country. But it has taken me five years to realise that it is okay to be a little quirky, as it is what makes me, me.
I would like to ask, what makes you, you?
If you like to be apart of the #BeYou campaign, then you can find more information by clicking here. Should you want any of the #BeYou merchandise displayed below then click this link – all proceeds go to BulliesOut! In the mean time, I have a challenge for you – eekk exciting! The challenge is, I want you to send me a photo or a sentence that illustrates what it means to #BeYou. You can send me them on Twitter or tag me on Instagram and don’t forget the hashtag #BeYou – I cannot wait for your responses!
If you would like to contact me then please do so here… Or if you would like to follow my One Direction twitter fan account then you can find it here (be warned: it contains a lot of fangirling, tweets with grammatical errors and to be honest, I spend most days begging Harry to follow me back – other than that it is full of ‘top notch banter’)!
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