> While I am as baffled as any/many at having subjective qualia appear so "real"

Appear so real compared to what?

Are you claiming that your experience of your own thoughts are subjectively more real than your experience of your sensory perceptions?

It's a bit tricker than it sounds, though. We cannot be aware of the absence of awareness. This could imply that we can only be aware of a sense of 'awareness' insofar as it was in fact differentiated from awareness itself, though a missing second step that is probably familiar to you (but it's a bit late at night for me to articulate it coherently).

Are you referring to nothingness?

I think that most of us can remember being 'nothing' (this might be wrong), and it baffles me why people are afraid to die, which is simply returning to 'nothing'.

That’s a preposterous claim. You obviously can’t remember not existing. Memory is not magical, it is a biological process that records information during your life and allows you to reexperience it.

It's a boundary condition. I expressed myself badly.

EDIT: If you are a physicalist. Some people are not.

EDIT2: "The Truth" has nothing to do with whether one is a physicalist or not, but the interpretation of some various sub-sets of the facts inform various ... schools of thought.