Heart-breaker

I am a heart-breaker.

There, I said it, got it off my chest. Phew!

For the uninitiated, the passives, and those in-between, it's tough being a heart-breaker, not all that pretty. My poor shoulder-blade is chipped from the burden of all those broken hearts, and the shards pierce me with every breath I take, every move I make, to emphasize on the sting of it all. None of those cotton candy pink hearts. I'm talking blood-vessel pumping, capillary-oozing, palpitating, fragile human hearts.

I am a heart-breaker, and I'm not proud of it.

I wasn't always this way. Like every person gone wrong, I started out being right. It takes some kind of perverse effort even to be a heart-breaker. Now I know what you're thinking- some PYT who's gotten a couple of love letters written with quills dripping blood from some poor Romeo's slashed wrists. But really, there is a classification table, and my name doesn't feature under the 'inspiration for suicide' column.

You see, when I was very young, as everyone is at some point of time, my mother, who had fallen in love with the idea of making the world a better place, decided that I, the fruit of her labor so to speak, would have to fulfill this noble dream of hers, she being a mother, obviously had to concentrate her energy on making the home a better place. And so her heart nurtured my own.

But all too soon, my heart grew wings and fluttered away.

Who wants to be a doctor? Not me.

Alright then, a nurse? A lawyer? Human rights, of course. I don't think so.

A teacher? A scientist? A marriage counsellor? No, no and a definite no.

What's that? You want to be a musician?!

And since that fateful moment, her poor heart never was the same. Neither was mine. Except, I was so deliriously happy every time I sang a note and that note managed to make someone smile. But that smile wasn't on prescription, so it didn't really count. And I don't think it's ever going to.

Like any other habit, heart-breaking is addictive. A string of hearts followed suit, and every time my heart sings, the splinters thrust in time with the resounding crescendo, and in the small silence after, there's just the softest sigh of disappointment from some distant chamber in my mansion of memories.

But when one love's one's art...