In a new interview with The Guardian, Louis Tomlinson opened up about the loss of his mother, who passed in 2016, and sister, who died this past March.

"After I lost my mum, every song I wrote felt, not pathetic, but that it lacked true meaning to me," he explained. "I felt that, as a songwriter, I wasn’t going to move on until I’d written a song like that," he said, referring to his emotional single, "Two of Us."

He wanted to work on his writing skills before attempting to write a song with such deep personal meaning. Two songwriter friends of his played him the chorus of the song and he was hooked.

"It was like the song I always wished I’d written," he continued. "I went in and put my personal touch to the verses. It was a real moment for me in my grief, and as part of the creative process, because it felt like it was hanging over me."

Tomlinson shared that the personal losses gave him a new outlook and perspective on life. "That whole dark side I’ve gone through, it sounds stupid to say, but it gives me strength everywhere else in my life, because that’s the darkest s--t that I’m going to have to deal with," he said. "So it makes everything else not feel easier and not less important, but, in the grand scheme of things, you see things for what they are, I suppose."

When asked what the losses taught him, he shared that he remains positive at the end of the day. "I keep going back to it, but I don’t know if it’s a combination of where I grew up and my mum’s influence, but I just have this luxury of being able to see the glass half-full no matter what."

Being the oldest of seven children, he said that there's no time for him to feel sorry for himself.

"I’ve been to rock bottom and I feel like, whatever my career’s going to throw in front of me, it’s going to be nothing as big or as emotionally heavy as that. So, weirdly, I’ve turned something that’s really dark into something that empowers me, makes me stronger."

He concluded, "I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. That’s not how I feel for myself. Somehow it fuels me."

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