Intro

Story experiences great bouts of emotional turmoil upon Planet X. He encounters reocurring depressive episodes overcoming him in debhilitating waves entirely unfamiliar.

When it arrives, he is flooded with sadness, frustration, anger, pain, fear, anxiety, and a sense of self hatred he'd never known before. He writes repeatedly in his journals, "What do I do with this energy?"

He feels like something is inside him, and it has a root. In the sacral space between his belly button and groin, he feels an extraordinary coil of energy, like a spring wound tight setting his whole being on overdrive. When the waves come, the tension in this space grows dramatically, like an anacanda constricting its prey. Its gravity increases and Story can do nothing but collapse inside it.

On one hand, it feels like himself- all the emotions that would typically be associated with a crash vicitim stranded upon a foreign planet are there, but there is also something else, something which moves with a velocity and pattern entirely foreign to Story.

It's not always there. At times there is a sweet and complete release from the sufferring. Sometimes, Story even finds himself experiencing joy as he walks across the planet, marveling at its landscape, termporarily relieved from the reminder that he's likely to be alone here for the rest of his life. But when the emotional waves come, he remembers it all, and its entirely debhilitating. He's thrown off balance, pinned to the ground, clutching the space below his navel, groaning until it passes.

He remembered being a very emotional child when he was young, but somewhere along the way, as he received his training, he was taught emotions were to be managed. The techniques to do so were imparted and applied. He was raised to be who he is- a soldier, a scientist, an explorer. He studied with Yogic masters imparting upon him ancient methods for stabilizing the field of awareness. He'd learned to minimize inner turbulence and optimize his internal landscape for scientific observation. He'd been prepared for war and armed with the capacity to sustain this awareness indefinitely beneath immense strain.After his training, his emotions were no longer a problem, but here, all the rigor devoted to his conditioning has become irrelevant. The techniques he'd once learned and relied upon were no longer relevant, and emotions were becoming a very large problem.