Every teenager will inevitably go through that first heartbreak, and millions of teens are crying their broken hearts out over the Internet because of an older man they have never met and who have never met them.

If there is one person who can be said properly broke the Internet, it isn’t Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift. It’s Zayn Malik, who recently announced he was leaving One Direction to live a normal life. The youngens who were counting on him to stay and live their boyband fantasies forever are extremely devastated.

"My life with One Direction has been more than I could ever have imagined," said Malik on the band's official Facebook page. "But, after five years, I feel like it is now the right time for me to leave the band. I'd like to apologize to the fans if I've let anyone down."

Of course, he let millions around the world down. Ask any middle school teacher in the U.S. whose classes were interrupted when their students burst into tears as news broke and spread quickly like wildfire.

"I am leaving because I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight," Malik said. "I know I have four friends for life in Louis (Tomlinson), Liam (Payne), Harry (Styles), and Niall (Horan). I know they will continue to be the best band in the world."

However, a lot of fans are still wallowing in their grief and don’t share the same optimism, and some of them are willing to go to some disturbingly morbid lengths just to bring back the previously five members of One Direction.

Some are in the throes of denial, which is understandable since it has only been a day since news broke.

Others have progressed on to anger, the second stage in what psychologists call the Kubler-Ross model of coping with grief, because Malik did not give them a proper closure, like a proper gentleman would when properly breaking up with somebody.

There are few who have gone on to bargain for Malik to rejoin the band, reaching out to people close to Malik and to anybody who would listen.

Pretty much every single one of his fans feels this way:

Some people are taking things in stride, though, and they can only wish Malik good luck as he pursues life without the fame and perhaps his fiancée, Perrie Edwards, although that isn’t so sure now as she has been reported to have left the house they shared together, with her bags and without her engagement ring.

When potentially devastating news about One Direction crops up, you can be pretty sure to hear a whole lot of other stories making their way around the web, of course, without proper attribution.

Because to them, one member leaving the boy band is equivalent to that person dying, as though his entire life is defined solely by his being a member of the group.

Of course, adults will never understand the sorrow all these girls are going through. Now that the fans have taken over Twitter and will probably continue until the next several days or so, adults have left the Internet with no plans of returning until the mobocracy dies down. There are, however, a few stragglers who managed to get their voice heard amid the bedlam.

Adults were also teenagers once, so it’s a little surprising why they can’t understand the mix of raw emotions these heartbroken teens are feeling right now. Well, only a little.

Let’s just hope these girls going through these turbulently hormonal stage in an era when they can post whatever they’re feeling on the Internet and make it seem like it’s the most earth-shattering thing in the world will eventually grow out of their obsession with boybands as the boys, no longer the boys they were, grow up into men.

Then again, maybe not.

Zayn Malik is no longer a member of One Direction, and the millions of young fans calling themselves Directioners are grieving on the Internet. Malik says he no longer wants the fame and wants to live life as a normal 22-year-old, that is, a normal 22-year-old with millions in his bank account.

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