While I felt no pain, I could really not experience true joy, either. I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about relationships, neither friendships nor romantics ones. But the truth was that I never really let anybody touch me. To do so requires intimacy. Hiding so much pain inside, I could never really let anyone in.
Intimacy requires sharing.
However, despite the fact that I worked very hard in therapy and went to 12-step meetings almost daily, I became more and more depressed. My friends, many of them professionals, told me that I needed to go on an anti-depressant. I would not. It was not that I felt there was anything wrong with doing so. But my depression deepened further and there were times that I did not want to go on.