How I stay out

This is based on a conversation I had a while ago with a friend of mine online. I found it today. He asked me how I stayed out of the deep dark depression and how I stayed away from drinking. This was part of my answer - forgive the chat style like prose.
wma

Mostly people struggle living with the fallacy that life is supposed to feel good and that we are supposed to be happy.
Our whole culture (in America) is based on the notion that you don't have to hurt and that you can be saved.
And sometimes, you can't.

It keeps people chasing the high.
And when you are down, in whatever darkness there is to be in,
It is not so much about how to get out.
It is how to stay out.

I stay out because I am comfortable with suffering.
I don't resist it.
I don't think things are supposed to be different than they are in the moment
But I don't let that stop me from believing they can be

I don't take what I have for granted
I know that feelings will lie
It is what you do that matters.
Feelings come and go and can even be created (watch any reality TV show...)
I know my job is stay open and present no matter how painful
and that pain does not kill
Ignoring it does.

And for me
No matter what
I want to see the truth.
What I do with it is another thing,
but I want to know
as ugly as it is sometimes
it is not as ugly as being bound up in running away.

That is how I stay out.