Even as a young girl, I loved to keep things organized. Most kids...well, most kids were messy. I never liked being around other children. They were too disheveled. As far as I can remember, I have always had an obsession with symmetry. It didn’t matter what it was. Dishes? They had to be evenly organized with matching cups standing parallel to each other. Cleaning? Everything had to be perfect. I could spend hours just organizing my bookshelf. I never enjoyed it. It was a necessity rather than an activity. Now, many people who visit my home complement my cleanliness. They say that any man who marries me got very lucky to have a wife who was so up to cleaning.

I disagreed.

All of my relationships had been torn apart by my...disorder...obsession? I don’t know. I just know that it ruined my life. My relationships were never long. They ended soon after my partner had changed something. He may not have put the toothpaste in the right spot or he may have left two different dishes laying across from each other. It didn’t matter. Long story short. he would say I'm uptight and need to relax and I would go into a fit of anxiety that could only be cured by reorganizing everything. God knows what else he had moved around while I wasn’t looking.
This desire for perfection had also crippled my chances of ever having a child. I simply didn’t want one. What if they didn’t turn out like me? What if they were messy? Or worse. What if they did? What if they were forced to go through life suffering to make everything perfect? I didn’t want this to happen to anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer this strange mentality. My mother, of course, didn’t understand my reasoning. She thought that a woman’s place was to have as many children as she possibly can to carry on the family name. She even tried to reason that having a child would get me to calm down and forget about my strange obsession. Despite her hopefulness, I knew that I would never be cured of this disease. I knew I would never have a child that was forced to be under my care. Oh, how wrong I was.
It was September 22, 2011, three years later, that I found out I was pregnant. I had finally been able to find someone who didn’t drive me insane. Someone who was okay with my desire for symmetry. We had been together for a whole of two years, but the relationship ended abruptly after he found out I was pregnant. He claimed that he wasn’t ready for a child. he still had too many years of his young life to live out before settling down. At first, I was utterly heart-broken, but as the months flew by and my stomach began to grow, I felt at ease. I even began feeling excited to hold and care for the child growing inside of me. For a second, I thought of my mother and had a feeling of hope wash over me. Maybe having this child would cure my horrifying disease.

I was painfully wrong.

I can remember the day when I had finally gone into labor. It was the middle of the night, I was home alone sleeping soundly. At first, I felt a strange pushing sensation and then suddenly, complete agony. I felt as though I was being ripped up from the inside. Like a strange, monstrous creature was tearing its way through. I screamed as my hands desperately searched for the phone. My room was dark and I was blind. There wasn’t even a moon to give even a sliver of light through my curtains. My hands finally gripped the phone, it almost slipped out of my hands once or twice due to my sweating, but I managed to keep my grip. I shakily typed in the numbers 9-1-1 and tried to steady my voice for the operator.

“9-1-1 what is the state of your emergency?” the operator questioned.

“I’m having my baby.Oh God...it hurts…” I forced out.

“Ma’am I need you to breathe and tell me your location and I will dispatch an ambulance right away.”

I breathed out a quiet “Okay,” and told her my address. Although it took a whole of thirty minutes, it felt like years until they finally arrived. As I heard them knock on the door I said gave a silent prayer, thankful that my room was on the ground floor. I slowly waddled to the door and was escorted into the ambulance. The ride to the hospital was bumpy and unpleasant. The baby, of course, was so much worse. I felt as though I barely made it to the hospital, but once I saw the sign stating I was about to enter Mercy hospital I almost cried with relief. It was as if I was entering Heaven rather than a hospital.

Seven hours. I was in labor for almost seven hours until I was finally able to give birth. Thankfully, the birth lasted a mere second. It was like ripping off a very large, very painful band aid. Sadly, the band aid was located on a very sensitive area.I could finally breathe easy. It was all over.

“It’s a boy.” The doctor said.

I was ecstatic. My mother had always wanted a grandson and I imagined that a boy would be much easier to deal with rather than a girl. The doctor made his way over to me, extending his arms to hand me my newborn. I felt his weight in my arms. He was warm. I dared a glance at his face, slightly worried at what I might find. I scanned his face, not with relief, but with complete joy. His face was absolutely perfect. All of his face was perfectly symmetrical. Even down to the two dimples that shows whenever he had yawned. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that my heart stopped. When he first opened his eyes I was utterly captivated by them. Not because they were beautiful, though I think most people would claim they are, but because one of them was a stunning icy blue so clear it almost looked white and the other was a deep, dark brown. That one almost looked black. I could feel my obsession pushing forward in my mind in a way that I felt was much harder than before.

~A Few Months Later~

I couldn’t sleep. I could barely eat. I picked up drinking again. My son’s eyes haunt me. Although, my mother says it’s a gift that should be appreciated, I feel like they’re a curse meant to drive me over the edge. A punishment for my corrupt mind. Every time I tried to go to sleep I would see those eyes. Those two unsymmetrical eyes. I couldn’t even look at my own son without getting a terrible itch running down both my arms. And I hated myself for it, but I just couldn’t bear it. As each day passes, I get a lot less sleep and a little more drunk. My son continues to smile at me extending his arms as a gesture for me to play with him. He doesn’t realize the pain he’s putting me through. Then again, how could he? He isn’t doing anything wrong. None of this is his fault. I researched his “condition” and found that it is called heterochromia iridium. It is a dominant trait. That he got from me. The only difference is that mine radiates from my iris and flares from green to blue, a radial and usually symmetrical form of the trait, and that his is complete, meaning his two eyes are completely different. I fear the day his condition drives me over the edge. It has happened once or twice in the past. It was only an accident though. I never truly meant for it to happen.

I looked at the clock. It was nearing ten and I thought it was best to put my son to sleep. Fortunately for me, I was the lucky mother who had a son who followed his sleep cycle to the “T.” I watched as he drifted off reveling in his symmetrical perfection as his eyes closed, hiding that damned mutation that causes me so much pain. I stood there for almost ten minutes, wishing that his eyes had not ruined him. Then I simply walked off to bed and did what I do every night. I lied back and watched the ceiling, thinking...wondering. What would it be like if his eyes were the same? Or...what if they didn’t exist at all? I almost laughed at the last idea...until, I thought, what if he didn’t have those damned eyes at all? What if--what if there was a way to take away those eyes so that I would never have to see them again? I smiled.

For the first time in months, I was able to sleep soundly.

I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and energized. I went into the kitchen and was about to make breakfast. My hands instinctively went for the knife in the drawer getting it ready to chop some onions for the omelette I originally planned to make, but I stopped. I looked at the tool in my hands. It wasn’t a big knife by any means. The blade was the width of my thumb and the length of my hands. I twisted and twirled the knife in my palm, then I sharpened it. I continued holding the knife in my hand as I went my son’s bedroom to check on him and to my delight he was still asleep. I walked closer to the crib and slowly reached my hand in. I dragged my fingers across his closed eyes. He flinched a bit under my cold touch and woke up. His two eyes looked at me and as his vision cleared he smiled. It was at that point I knew what I needed to do. I raised the knife in my hands, until it matched the height of my head, then I forced it down and rammed it right into the end table next to my son’s crib. I picked him up and walked back to the kitchen placing him in his highchair. I then walked over to the phone, picked it up, and called a therapist that was recommended to me a long time ago. I scheduled an appointment and felt a sudden weight lift off of my shoulders.

After all, I loved to keep organized...