Disclaimer: For the ENTIRE story, I'm only gonna say this once: I. Own. Nothing. I don't even have a sane mind to call my own.
How My Perfect Life Was Inverted
Prologue: A Cure for Depression
Sierra wasn't a girl that got attached easily. Needless to say, she wasn't big on commitment. Meaning that when it came to her love life, she…well, let's just say she wasn't the most self-respecting of women.
"The technical term is 'loose'," Janelle had said rather bluntly.
She wouldn't class herself as 'loose'. It all boiled down to three magical words where her social life was concerned: She. Was. Sierra. She didn't get attached, she didn't bond, didn't unify, didn't connect, didn't 'amalgamate', as Janelle liked to put it. And yet…it doesn't matter. Nothing really does anymore. Not to her.
The point was, she was her. And her wasn't perfect. It was like her father had said to her that blessed February evening several years ago: "You're nothing. You're worthless."
And it was true; she was just a twenty-seven year old college-dropout-turned-romance-novelist—a fact she was trying constantly to forget. She lay sprawled out on her sofa that doubled as a bed in her small cramped flat in London's notorious East End, staring at the blank TV screen. Of course it'll be blank; it was off. Nevertheless, the female continued to stare. Staring so hard, yet unseeing. Just…remembering. Her favourite memories; the ones where she'd gone to her favourite place on earth for just a few months. The months when she'd been truly happy, truly herself. Truly free.
Freedom; that's what it's all about, isn't it? It's what he's all about.
Sierra prevented herself from laughing aloud. Three years ago, she would have thought that a girl sitting around thinking about some bloke was a pathetic girl not worth knowing. But three years ago, she hadn't known Captain Jack Sparrow. Yet.
Sierra thought back to a previous conversation with what was probably her one true friend; American marine archaeologist Janelle Anderson-Geller: "Let's say this did happen, OK? Let's pretend, for one moment, that this isn't one big hallucination resulting from too much time in the sun and freshly-brewed Caribbean-style rum cocktail and being like, gee, I dunno, shipwrecked or whatever for more than half a year. So what are you gonna do about it?"
What was she going to do about it?
"Yeah, you can't just sit around all depressed and lovesick-teen-angst 'til the end of your days. You have to release all your emotions—let it all out."
Great. Um, how?
"It's different depending on what type of person you are and your talents. Musicians play all their feelings out in their music; martial artists vent out their frustration via jujitsu. Well, I've read all that stuff on your laptop. The non-romance novels you wrote, the ones you hadn't try to publish, the ones you don't get paid for? They're really good. So write about it."
And exactly where did she receive all her ancient wisdom? Janelle was a marine excavator or whatever.
"My mum is a professional therapist."
That was more or less two years ago, and had she heeded Janelle's well-meaning advice? No, of course not. She'd made a show of being her normal happy, carefree, carousing self to assure everyone she was fine. Why did she put on a show instead of letting her true emotions show? Because she was Sierra, and Sierra was stubborn. Sierra, she remembered, is also another word for 'mountain range'. She was pretty certain that if she had self-esteem issues, the knowledge of her namesake definitely wouldn't help. The actual meaning of the Spanish name, her mother had said, meant 'black'. Sierra. Black. Sierra black. Black Sierra. Black sheep. How apt.
I'll write, she decided, finally heeding Janelle's advice. If I can't be with Jack, the least I could do is make sure that people remember him again. When she'd returned from her 'trip', Sierra had lost what little was left of her sanity, going through every archive, every record listed in maritime history she could get her hands on. And no Jack. But he wasn't a figment of her imagination; there was one account of the Black Pearl attacking Port Royal and kidnapping an Elizabeth Swann, Port Royal's governor's daughter of the time.
So the ship was real. Which meant Jack was. He just wasn't there.
Janelle had comforted her then, patting her back when she couldn't find any traces of Jack and had broke down: "Look, I don't know who you're looking for, or why they're so important to you, but not all criminals were recorded in history."
Huh?
"All official records were kept in London. Remember, most of the Caribbean still belonged to England, France, Spain or Portugal during this time period? Well, they were still governed by those countries, meaning all official records were transported to the capital of the country by boat. It's possible some never made it, getting caught in a storm or something. The next wreck I'm working on is just northeast of the Bahamas, travelling to London. That could have the record you're looking for."
She wasn't too keen on history, so she just put her faith in Janelle and decided to believe she was right. But of course, her lacking interest of history had changed after her little escapade.
Forcing herself to stand, Sierra made her way to the small kitchen table just behind the tattered sofa in her modest abode where her treasured laptop sat, worn and battered from her travels. She used it to write articles for whoever she could; tabloids, broadsheets, teen magazines, etc. It also hosted her embarrassing collection of romance novels, which she'd deleted as soon as they were published. It was also her link to the outside world, as her phone line had been cut off (which would you choose: electricity or phone?). More importantly, to Janelle, who was still working on that shipwreck near the Bahamas. Apparently, the wreck was more fragile than she and her team had originally believed, so it had to be handled delicately, thus taking longer.
Flicking it open, Sierra hit the power button. As it started up, Sierra thought about how she would get her publishers to go for it. My first novel will be my autobiography, she thought wryly to herself, the ghost of a smile dancing across her lips. Because I wasn't actually alive until I met Jack Sparrow.
And she began to type.
¤
When you fall in love with the wrong guy, it can only end in tears. When I fell for Kevin Howard, I had unknowingly set in action events that would eventually spiral out of my control. I was nineteen, and when I fell under Kevin's spell I, like so many others before me, thought it was the start of something beautiful. Well, unlike others, it was, for me. More than even I, an infatuated young woman with the brain capacity of a fifteen-year-old lovesick schoolgirl who spends all her free time fantasizing about her perfect life (which included the perfect relationship), had even dreamed was possible. It had started something beautiful; just not in the traditional or conventional sense of the phrase.
It had also started my inevitable downfall from high-flying university student to low drunken party girl in the space of a month. Which, in turn, resulted in my expulsion from Oxford. Resulting in my disownment from my family, which led to a life of hell balancing several minimum-wage jobs and thousands of debts. Well, when you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. And I soared, higher than I'd ever been in my entire life. Than I'd ever thought was humanly possible.
If I could turn back time and 'mend the error of my ways', I most definitely would not. Any rational person could claim that if I had fixed my life so that the one catastrophic event which caused my life to plummet, I'd be so much more respected, richer, and probably dating a charming, successful businessman.
So evidently, I wouldn't change a single thing. And it's all because of the one sole fact that if I hadn't given my heart to a man that couldn't possibly love me back, I'd never have experienced heartbreak so vividly and excruciatingly as I had. Therefore, I'd never have been renounced by my family for getting kicked out of school simply for attempting to drown out my sorrows. Subsequently, then I'd never have been given an apologetic tour around the world. Which meant I'd have never met Jack Sparrow.
AN: Bear in mind, this is just a (very lengthy) prologue. First chapter: less sappy, more happy. Hold back judgement 'til you've read chap. 1. Please?