For one direction fans, This has been the longest 5 months of their lives. There was life before March 25, and there has been what "life" is since then. That fateful spring day marks the moment Zayn Malik saw what we now know was inevitable, the probable disintegration of One Direction , and he jumped ship first. He walked away from one of the biggest boy band's of late to "be a normal 22-year-old,".