I went into denial. My family complied by never mentioning my ears again. Ever. I went on as if nothing had happened. I even forgot about the ghost in spite of the fact that I performed some gruesomely reckless tasks. I must have been overanesthesized during the surgery because I had flashback for months. Weird visual effects would happen if I stared at tile patterns on the bathroom floor too long. But the ghost made me do a horrible thing that haunts me to this day. I was giving my baby brother a bath, and something made me hold him underwater for a few seconds longer than a baptism would have required. He started to shake so I brought him up, and felt guilty and strangely out of control. There was definately something wrong with me, there had to be. I held him under again, this time longer, until the panic showed in his eyes, I quickly brought him back up, and he cried and broke my heart. I never did anything like that again, but I spent years categorizing my level of depravity for the act. The ghost? No, that was too easy. My self loathing was born during those horrible seconds.
About a year later I slaughtered 25 frogs that I found in the ground outside my school. I kept them under the nun's radar in a grocery box in class till school let out and I secreted them on the bus home. Then, for no reason, I carried the box around to the stucco'd side of the officer's condos where we lived, and threw them one by one into the air, and swatted them with a baseball bat so that they splattered against the side of the condo. I felt guilty about that for a long time too, but once again, went into complete denial, that maybe nothing was wrong with me. I was actually a really good person who wouldn't hurt a fly. I just left the frogs there too, and if anyone had discoverd that mess. Thirty years later I watched Beavis and Butthead do the exact same thing, and finally forgave myself.
The Ghost had become a crutch.
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