The Eyes

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

It's something I've heard so many say they suffer from, that if one tiny thing is out of place - they have a break down until its fixed. Raised in a family of OCD people, I saw these break downs quiet often. My mother wasn't too bad, sometimes if I miss placed the controller for the television, lost a fork, forgot to switch a light off or forgot to put washing away she would get mad. My father too wasn't that bad, paintings had to be straight, things had to be in a neat order and not moved or he would notice.

No the worse was my older sister.

We share a room, a room in which everything is symmetrical. When she was 5, she cried and screamed for days because the door to the room was an inch closer to the left wall so my father had to move the door an inch to the right. Our beds are opposite from each other - not a millimetre out. We have the exact same bed covers, the exact same shape of pillow with no extra ones on our bed because the room then wouldn't be symmetrical. The walls are painted a lilac colour, all of them are the same tone throughout and there's not a single mark on any of the walls. No posters are up because we would have to buy two to make it symmetrical. The floor was wooden and always clean, nothing could be left on the floor without her having a break down. The television is in the centre of the room with our gaming console in front of it with two controllers and two piles of games that always have to be even. She even goes as far as to stack the games symmetrically by gaming company.

I don't suffer from this. I don't mind if my pillow has been moved, if I have an uneven amount of peas on my plate or if there's more shampoo than conditioner. I sometimes dreamed of being perfect however. I could see how perfect my sister was but I know that nobody can truly be perfect.

But sometimes...I think like this because I know I am forever unable to be perfect, unable to be symmetrical.

Heterochromia iridium.

Ironic you could say. A family of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and I was born with my left eye blue and my right brown. My mother has beautiful sea blue eyes while my father has dark mud brown eyes so I took a little off the two. I have always adored my unique condition, people always said I had beautiful eyes, I would sometimes wear my fringe over my left eye so I looked to have brown eyes but then switch it the following day to confuse people.

Everyone liked it.

Except my sister.

She despised it, saw it as a curse on herself and not me. Since the day I was born, she has always tried to correct this one mistake, this one blemish in an otherwise perfect room, perfect house and perfect life. She begged mother to get an operation but mother pointed out it would cost too much and wasn't sure if such an operation exists.

For years, my sister decided to keep quiet about my eye. I sometimes would see the hatred in her own light blue eyes, a burning hatred that I know she couldn't control. However I would always smile, being the good person I am. I couldn't hate her for this, it was my body's fault for making me like this and her own body's fault for making her OCD.

As I grew older, my sister's mind stayed the same as a child's. She would still have her break downs, still throw a tantrum when things weren't perfect and still hated my eyes. I finally agreed to wear coloured contacts for her. I had never seen her so happy, the smile she gave me was unsettling however, a smile of the weakness of the mind. I preferred my brown eye and also for a laugh it would even out the amount of people who have brown eyes in the family.

On the day I got my contacts, I put them in and decided to meet my sister for lunch. I met her in a small café where upon greeting her she threw water over me. What had I done wrong? I was perfect. I was symmetrical.