Those of you who have been on the site for a while might have been questioning or wondering about my recent hiatus. After all, for the past fifteen years or so, I was what you might consider a “regular”. For those of you who have ever frequented a a local drinking establishment, you know what I’m talking about. Shit, there was time back in the day where I think I was averaging a node a day (or something like that) for a while. But, like an aging hitter in baseball who could once smack line drives like they were strung on a rope or could dash around the bases like The Flash, time takes its inevitable toll. You begin to slow down and your skills begin to deteriorate with the passing of each day and pretty soon everybody notices and you are left a shell of your former self.

Unless, of course, you like to tell yourself lies when you look in the mirror.

I’ve told my fair share of lies during my lifetime, some little, some small, some to others and some to myself. I think, in the long run, those are the ones that when revealed, hurt the most. So I’m here today to bare my soul or cleanse my slate (whatever euphemism works, baby) and hopefully look at things from a fresh start and a new perspective.

It was a little over a year and half ago when all the troubles began. I had just lost my job due to recent downsizing and was taking advantage of the settlement offer my former company had generously thrown my way. Needless to say, this involved a wee bit of drinking on my part to either help me drown the present or forget about the future and maybe just to vent about my current situation.

Upon departing my local watering hole, (thanks to whoever confiscated my car keys) I decided to make my way home. The walk isn’t very long and I was decidedly drunk and was in no mood to take any shit from anybody. Anybody who knew me could see me coming from a mile away.

And so it was, at the midpoint of the intersection of High and Acadia, when I ran into a stranger who would change my life forever. Or maybe he ran into me, you be the judge, I’ll try and reconstruct the dialogue as best as I can.

Driver: ”Hey asshole, can you possibly walk any fuckin’ slower?

Borgo: ”Sure fuckin’ can.”

At this point, thinking myself rather clever for pointing this out, I decided to slow my pace to a virtual crawl. Time seemed to slow down and as I got nearer to the car decided to end with a coup de grace and flipped the driver the bird. I felt a sense of smugness and self-worth that had eluded me the entire day.

The last thing I remember hearing was the squeal of the tires and the roaring of the engine. I looked up just in time to see the car barreling down straight at me and the driver with some kind of maniacal look on his face. In retrospect, I guess he had a bad day too but certainly not as bad as mine. As best as I can determine, the authorities never caught up with him. All I can say is that I hope you can live with yourself for you’ll never be able to repay the damage you’ve done.

Here’s where we get to the not so good part.

I awoke in the hospital with bandages and casts covering almost all of my body. Tubes were sticking out of places they had no business being in the in first place and the portions of my skin that were visible had turned to some sort of color that God had neglected to define and that I had never seen before. I was being fed through straw or an IV and could hardly manage to move. You might as well forget about relieving yourself under those circumstances with any sense of dignity either. If you’ve ever been stuck in a hospital for any extended period of time, you’ll also come to discover that no matter how many visitors, friends or family you have, they become real lonely, real quick

Here’s where we get to the even worse part.

After some consultations, my situation wasn’t improving and the doctors realized that there was some swelling go on in my brain and informed me the best course of action would be to place me in a self-induced coma so that they could go in there and do some poking and prodding around. (I’m sure those weren’t the terms they used but to me, that was the bottom line.) I tried to make a joke of it by replying that I’d been in a self-induced coma for as long as I could remember and with that reply would come to discover one of life’s truisms.

Neurosurgeons do not have a sense of humor.

And so it as decided to go ahead. I did all the paperwork, signed countless releases and filled out my DNR and in a strange way, hoped it would come to that. Should things take a turn for the worst, I signed away my remains and thought it would be some sort of poetic justice if somebody had better luck with it than I did.

Flash forward a few months later…

After a lengthy recovery period, I’m home now and it feels sorta good. Oh, there was all sorts of rehab that had to be done, both physical and mental, but I seem to be adjusting well.

Or so I tell the doctors and the shrinks and anybody else that will listen but I’m keeping some of what happened a secret. I’m here to reveal that to the few of few of us that are left and that have called this place a sanctuary over the years.

Big breath…

I now have the somewhat uncanny ability to diagnose other people and their thoughts, hopes, experiences without them even uttering a word. I don’t even have to know them to tell them what their future will be like. I see love and hate, birth and tragedy, hope and hopelessness in everybody I see and it had begun to take a toll on me. I couldn’t and still can’t turn it off and for the past year or so have been afraid to go out in public. I’ve become a prisoner of my own home and mind for each passing encounter with another human being tells me something I don’t want to know.

How can there be any room left in my head? How come it hasn’t exploded with tiny bits of gray matter and all those pasts and futures just waiting to be set free so that they could go back to their original owner? I wish I knew an answer to that one but for now, I’ll stand the lonely vigil and remain lost in other people’s thoughts.

Now, here’s where we get to the absolute worst part.

Not a single word of this is true

Happy Halloween suckas!