Stories of the Untold...

Symmetry

I love symmetry. I’m not sure exactly why but I’ve loved it since I was a kid. Most children are messy and forgetful of their things. Not me. I knew everything has a place and in my room, everything was right where it belongs. My parents didn’t have It. My grandparents didn’t have It either. Not a single person in my family had “It”. I’ve started referring to it as “It” because I truly believe it’s a thing inside me. A stowaway that shouldn't be there but lives inside me. It’s a need. A desire. A longing to be perfect. Perfect on both sides. As an adult, I’m at the point where I can’t live my life normally. I can’t keep a job. Women don’t stay with me because they can’t handle It. Honestly, I don’t care when they leave. They’re messy and make things difficult. They roll over to my side of the bed instead of staying on their own. They leave dishes in one side of the sink but not the other. I can’t work anymore so when they leave for the day, I have to stay home and fix everything. It’s a relief when they leave for good. That feeling never lasts though, eventually It comes back and finds something else that needs fixing. You may be asking, why would I seek out relationships to begin with if I can’t stand them? Well, it’s hard for me to sleep in the middle of the bed all night without moving.

Other than the relationship problem, my life is pretty much in order. I say “pretty much” because there is one last issue that must be dealt with. You see I have what’s called “Heterochromia Iridum” or two different colored irises. My right eye was cornflower blue, my left pale green. Both my parents have cornflower blue eyes, my siblings and cousins as well. My green eye is the broken one. It makes me...unbalanced. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, It stares right back at me. It’s all I think about now. Everything is in its right place except my green little mistake. It didn’t hurt at first when I dug the spoon under my eye. It didn’t even hurt when it popped out and was hanging by my cheek. Was it shock that was keeping the pain away or was it It? I snipped the optic nerve and blotted the warm fluids that were streaming down my face. My vision being cut in half was a strange sensation. What was left of the dangling flesh, I placed back in the now empty hole. I bandaged the wound, rinsed the spoon, and went to sleep.

I woke up...happy. I slept better than I had in years. It was finally done. I was fixed. I got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. My body ached and my head was on fire. I flipped the switch in the bathroom and the light was blinding. I slowly removed the bandage that was soaked with blood and was sticking to my face like tape. When I looked up to the mirror, my stomach turned. Only then had I realized what I’d done to myself and I couldn't believe it. There was a hole in the left side of my face...but not the right. I was unbalanced. Again. It was much harder digging out the second eye. My hands were shaky and when I dug the spoon in, I missed several times, puncturing my pupil three times before I got the it in the right place. Once the eye popped out, I reached for my scissors to finish the job. The blood from the previous night had dried on the blades, so the scissors didn’t cut very well. You know when you were a kid in elementary school and your teacher made you cut construction paper for art projects? Did you ever try to cut too many pieces at once but the scissors couldn't take it? The blades would kind of fold over each other and the paper would get pinned between them? That’s what happened with my eye. The optic nerve was pinned between the two blades. It was stuck and as I tried desperately and frantically to make it unstuck, I slipped on the blood and started falling to the floor. Reflexes kicked in and I let go of my eye to try to break my fall with my hand. The weight of the stuck scissors on my hanging eye was unbearable. I knew I couldn’t stand it long enough to make it to the kitchen to get a knife. So I pulled. I pulled it straight out of my head. I felt the flesh tear from inside my skull. I felt it rip and spew liquids everywhere. I knew I was crying but there was no telling the tears from the blood from the ocular fluid. When I heard the wet slap of bloody flesh against the tile floor, I knew I was done. I knew It was done. I could live my life now without having to see peoples awful, messy, uneven lives. The relief washed over me and I knew it would last this time. I had never felt this way before, never had this much hope. As I laid in my bathroom on that cold, wet, sticky tile, I smiled for the first time in years.