What Goes Boom in the Night?

Am I fated to live Odysseus' life, to be away from home for twenty years? Ten years to be spent fighting a war that seems near impossible to win? A war against an enemy that has nearly never been defeated. And If I win this war, storming the cancerous walls of Troy, to what do I have to look forward? Another ten years at sea, trying to find my way home? Having lost myself in battle, I will awake every morning to a phantom pain, a nonexistent affliction that agonizes my psyche. I will spend every month at first, then every three months, then every six months, then every year waiting for that ache of malignancy to return.
As she sleeps, my fiancee tosses and mumbles inaudible cries that seek understanding. Finally, she asks aloud, "How can I plan for a future with you when I can't even be sure that you will be there?" How indeed. And I have no reasonable answer for her cries. What can I tell her? How do you put other people inside of your mind? What if she could know what I see just before I fall asleep.
In those moments before I fall asleep - a demi-death so to speak, a veritable recreation of the death experience itself - while others dream of being Peyton Manning, or Barack Obama, or Bill Gates, or Britney Spears, I imagine what might be if I never opened my eyes again. I meditate on the idea that sleep and death feel the same, the only difference being waking up.
My eyes grow heavy, but I fight on against the force that threatens to close my eyes. And in my illusory perceptions of conscious sleep I can visualize the organs in my body. I see black, hardened tissue spreading over the pink, fleshy cells like locusts over a lush green meadow. I see the images from health class of a smoke-damaged lung, the black tissue is the gnarled and twisted metals of a building burned down. Negative images of my body scans paint the backs of my eyelids. My body is the view from a ski resort window in the Swiss Alps, white snow as far as the eye can see. The flickering of concerned eyes from friends and family while they hear the unfortunate news. The gaping mouths of disbelief. This is not the winter, nor summer, spring nor fall of our unhapiness, these are the days of our discontent.
Have I fallen asleep? Am I still awake? Every day there is something to remind me, something that tells me that I am sick, that I am dying. My response, continues to feel the same: show me something other than black pictures with white skeletons swaying to and fro on them, I DO NOT FEEL SICK. I only feel the cold touch of death while lying on the chairs in which you tell me to lie. Only after accepting the medicine that you tell me to accept. Come see me on the other days I tell them. Come and sit on the couch with me and watch "Step Brothers." Show me I'm sick then. The mind cannot feel what the body does, and, unfortunately, the body cannot comprehend what the mind ponders. If only the body knew that it was not sick, then perhaps I might wake from this nightmare. But the body knows what the mind is unwilling to admit. He senses the infiltrator tip-toeing here and then there floating through his canals on a trip to another part of the body...
I'm jolted awake... I finally can escape the hauntings of my mind. I do NOT agree with the ideas that penetrate the soft walls of my head during the night hours, but I cannot escape them since I cannot control them. Surely, these thoughts exist in my mind somewhere; in some cavernous Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean of my psyche. These are not my thoughts. These are inescapable horrors that come with the territory. It is like watching a horror film: one enjoys the feeling of being scared - or at least they are able to cope with seeing it - but one cannot escape the fearful thoughts that creep into the mind and poison the dreams of individuals.
Rest assured that thoughts alone will not make me too afraid to look under the bed, because I know that there are no monsters that dwell there. Come out from hiding and face me head on, I chide them. Like I thought, they prefer the deep ocean trenches. I think their voices are made scarier by the echoes, which deepen the groans and heighten the screams.
I am not afraid, nor should you be My Love. They are shadows and dust only. So, sleep quietly and sleep soundly.
Do not fear what cannot hurt you; and thoughts alone cannot pierce the skin...