A/N. Once again, thank you to all of you who continue to review this story. Your support means the world to me, especially with this story because like I said before, it's not easy to write at all. You're all helping me so much more than you could possibly know.
This chapter is obviously a little more straight forward obviously because the relationship between Logan and Camille is much easier to write about. Despite the fact that they're an "on again, off again" couple on the show, I almost always have them as a couple in my stories and this only continues that trend. It's probably the least personal chapter for me because I've never had a relationship like this, but a lot of what Logan says is still relevant. I hope this story continues to help some of you out.
I don't own anything.
Reason Number Four: Camille
"I've been beaten down, I've been kicked around, but she takes it all for me. And I lost my faith, in my darkest days, but she makes me want to believe." - She is Love by Parachute.
There are three kinds of people in this world when it comes to love. The kind that don't believe in love, the kind that believe in love and nothing else, and the kind that have no idea what to believe. Kendall was part of this first group until he met Jo and now he's changed. So have I. Except that I was part of the third group. When it came to love, I was as lost as I could possibly be.
You know why, Camille. I was young when my mother died, but I still remember her. I remember how in love my parents were with each other and I never once doubted that they both loved me too. But after my mom died, things changed. My dad stopped loving me. And I began to question the idea of love. Because if death can kill the love one person has for another, is it really that strong? Shouldn't it be able to survive? Not for my dad. His love died along with my mom. And that hurt. That hurt a lot.
I think it was when I was eight or nine that I started questioning the idea of love. By then I was old enough so that I wasn't oblivious to my dad's weakening attention span, and that was when Kendall's parents started having problems in their marriage. It's hard to see so many people you look up to come undone like they did, especially when you're a little kid. But back then I didn't really realize what was happening. It wasn't until I grew older that I realized how much damage had been done.
See, Kendall and I are a lot more alike than anyone might see at first glance. You have to get to know us both a little better. I think that's why we've always been just a little bit closer to each other than James and Carlos. Don't get me wrong, I don't love them any less than I do Kendall. But there's Carlos with his happy family with five sisters, a great mom, and an incredible father. There's James who is an only child with two happily married parents who support his dream just like every parent should. Then there's me and Kendall with our screwed up families. It's that broken connection that keeps us so close.
This isn't about Kendall though or even myself. It's about you, Camille. And how you, like Jo has done for Kendall, changed my life. You pushed past every wall I had unconsciously built up around me and stripped away all of my insecurities. Only love can do that.
I'll be the first to admit that we're nothing alike. You're bold, determined, and a dreamer. When you're in the room, everyone wants to watch and listen to you because you're so captivating and fascinating. Me? People use words like "shy", "grounded", and "levelheaded" to describe me. Well. People who understand me anyway. Not everyone understands. Those people like to use words like, "boring", "stuck-up", and other words that I won't repeat. You get the point though. The two of us make about as much sense as. . . well, we don't make any sense.
But then again, I've made a life out of connecting with people who are nothing like me. Look at my best friends! I mean, aside from what I already mentioned with me and Kendall both coming from broken families, there's nothing that we have in common. Yeah we all play hockey, and yeah we like to sing and dance. But not everyone who plays hockey gets along and the same goes for people who like to sing and dance. The four of us are as different as four best friends could get.
And yet, maybe that's why we work so well together. Maybe that's why you and I work so well together, Camille. It's more than opposites attract. It's that we're not whole until we're together. It's that when we're alone, we're missing a bunch of little things. When we're together, those missing things are found in each other and we become complete.
There's another question about love that people will always be divided over. Is there one special person for everyone or can we really pick and choose? I think it's a mixture of both. Obviously the pick and choose method doesn't work out for everyone, we all witnessed that firsthand with Kendall's parents. But I also believe that if you do find that special someone and you lose that special someone, you can find love again.
My dad could have found love again. He was never a bad person, Camille, please understand that. I know that my friends, especially Kendall, have the tendency to paint this really awful picture of him. But he was just misunderstood. There's something about love that a lot of people forget to consider.
To truly love another, I believe you must first love yourself. Not that kind of love where you're narcissistic or anything, but that kind of love where you know that you're important and that you deserve to be happy and to be loved. That's so hard sometimes. We look at all of our failings and wonder how we could ever be loved by anyone. But then we become so wrapped up in thinking that we don't deserve to be loved, that all we're thinking about is ourselves, and we forget how to love others.
That's the way it was for my dad, Camille. He lost himself in his grief after the accident. He questioned why he had ever been so fortunate to have love in the first place and then decided that he didn't deserve love at all. He had this deep self-hatred and made him blind to those he still had left. Made him blind to me.
Since then, I've always been afraid to love. I've been afraid of love. I was always terrified that I would be just like my own father. I didn't want to pass along the damage that he had done to me. No one deserved to be hurt like that or to be made to feel totally worthless.
But thanks to you and everyone else on these tapes, I know now that the people you know will only affect your life if you let them. Sure, it's hard to ignore the ones who drag us down whether it's intentional or not. But you can define your life by how you live and the choices you make if you really want to. You can choose to think only of those who hurt you and be miserable for your entire life and make everyone around you miserable, or you can let yourself be loved and love others in return.
Kendall, James, and Carlos have always made me feel like that, Camille. But you have too. And you've also made me feel like I can be happy without feeling guilty. That I can love and be loved. That I can have a family of my own and not be a total screw-up.
I want to marry you one day, Camille. I want to be your husband so much. I want to wake up to you beside me every morning and to go to sleep with you at my side every night. I want to raise a family with you. I know we're still both so young, way too young to be thinking about marriage. But I can't help myself with you. I can easily see you in my future. When I look at my future, I see my best friends and you. That's all I want and all I need.
My father was also afraid to love again after he lost my mom. He was afraid of being hurt. Maybe that's another reason I had doubts. Love should be able to handle anything. It does. True love anyway. That's why I know that if I were to lose any of you, I would be okay. Of course it wouldn't be easy. Of course, I might even become depressed for a long while. But I know that I would always have someone to pull me back from the edge and make me realize that despite my losses, life is still worth living. I wouldn't let myself be blinded my grief like my father did. He let it overtake him and he lost even more than my mother. He lost his life. He didn't die until eight years later when I was fourteen but as the years wore on after my mother's death, I saw my father die slowly, by degrees. That's not going to happen to me.
So thank you, Camille. For letting me see that I needed to know that I was deserving of your love in order to love you. And for making me realize that love exists in the first place as long as we let it. And for giving me hope for my future with you and my friends. Love really is all we need. Thank you for everything, Camille. I love you so much and I promise that I always will.
A/N. I know these chapters are often short and that there are long stretches of time in between each chapter. But I want them to be as perfect as possible and I'm finding that more often than not, the message just needs to be short and simple. The message of this entire story is actually quite simple. It's that love is all we need and that we have to not only give it away, but to take it as well. I think that a lot of us spend too much time on only one of these things and that we need to do both to be truly happy and have peace in our lives. Does that make sense?
For this chapter specifically, I just want you all to know that you deserve to be loved. You're all incredible individuals, but you can't give away your love and not expect anything back. I realize it may sound confusing because it could come off as sounding selfish when I say "love yourself". But I really believe that if you go through life thinking that you're worthless and undeserving of love, then you can't really give any love out. You can only give what you have.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to update next because my schedule has been a little crazy and I'll be especially busy for a while after today. But hopefully it won't be weeks and weeks without an update. I also would love to get the "Love Thyself" series really going so I can finish everything before Christmas. I have a special Christmas story planned and it's going to be very happy after all this angst I've been writing. I'd love to be able to focus on just that one story. In the meantime, I love you all and if you have a minute, please let me know what you thought about this chapter! Thank you!
